The Sun.
London, England, 1846-06-08 00:00:00

LOWE'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

" Lowe's Review," we opine, would have been a much
more applicable and significant title to this periodical,
as the major portion of its contents partake more of the
critical character than of the didactic. And we must
candidly assure its editor that in this distribution of
articles he does not act very judiciously, the original
essays or disquisitions contained in the number for
June being of considerable ability, while the criticisms
are, on the average, feeble and flippant to a painful
extent. " Sir Tristram and Sir Galahad " is a very
ownhigieJo,,li snoliitnuodxe
and Intercourse agreeable reminiscence of the chivalric era; the con-
tribution
"posslesnsteesaunrse , contains
many interestconqtauites itsownnocel and startling reflezions. Take, for ex-
ample,
Thinkingthese umpeonno
fs oaliny r
tu dee
l nobleness have ever been men
of brotherly heart,'yet they have loved solitude.
by necessity of nature, they have in solitudeierfecteel
.T
love;
they have been social solitaries. Whoever strenuous]
to live spiritually, will need and desire times of Seekssolicitude,
and to these he will be sometimes drawn, sometimes driven.
Within Lim he will find a wild, pathless hill country,'
within him, also, pleasant and sacred groves, with trees
flower-garlanded, and dropping honey. He will have both
griefs and joys. True thought has ever its pains and throes,
but there will be often the dull agony that cannot think.
There will be sometimes a composed peace of mind, when ,
truth will reveal itself in its two-fold solemnity, as to one
floating on a still sea Heaven is disclosed, alternately as a fir-
mament of star-garnished darkness, and as a firmament of
radiant, invigorating sunshine. But there will also be times
of fear, when a horror of great loneliness overspreads the heart
as a storm-darkness on a sultry day, and when winds of thought
whisper no more sweetly as the voices of angels, but sound
strangely, like the distant cry and wailing of evil spirits
drawing nearer. Loneliness may. be indeed a bitter and
chilling imprisonment—a bondage m 'darkness that may be
felt'—an Egyptian bondage, in Egyptian darkness. Many a
man who has loved his times of solitariness as the evening
twilight, when that twilight has deepened into a continuing
night, has cried unto God, and said—' My Father, I am afraid
in this great darkness. Where art Thou?' There cannot
be right action without thoughtful solitude, but there
cannot be a blessed solitude without right action; neither
has power of itself, they are joined of God.' "

" When, then, we retire from the outward, we go not into
an unillumined darkness; the light of onr own spirit is, in its
brightness, more and more revealed to us, and we are
wholly filled with its steady shining. But within us, we have
not only a country, to walk in which we need light, but, as it
were, a dwelling-house with chambers; and, having twith-
drawn from the world, and kindled a lamp in some quiet
chamber, earthly noises may be to us as winter rain, patter-
ing drearily againt the closed casement of our spirit, whilst
we sit within, cheered with the light of our thoughts, and
warmed with the fire of our musings. It is then that
to our heart speaks the sttll small voice' of God. No man
hears this, if ever surrounded with the tumult and
.contradic-
tion of other voices. This sacred voice speaks not to us alone
new things, but often thrills us with its utterance of things
well known. Then, specially if it be ours to represent truth
to our brethren, the spirit of searching comes upon us. If
truth believed be not in silence pondered, there is danger that
we get a defiled conscience—knowing that we seek to make
others feel what we feel not ourselves, and affirm that to be
obligatory upon all men which has not full control over us.
As our outward life widens, our inward ene must deepen."
In all this there may be something mysterious, but
reason and our innate emotion tell us that it contains
nothing absolutely ,chimerical. As a specimen of the
flimsy style of reviewing introduced in this Magazine,
we may be allowed especially, to instance the one upon
the " New Timon." It is of course, allowable for
every one to form a different opinion as to the
merits of a particular poem, the more so,.
as some poetical productions address themselves in a
peculiar manner to the idiosyncracy of some individuals,
and consequently find no sympathy from readers of a
perfectly,
,opposite idiosyncracy. We are not, therefore,
cavilling at the fact of that Edinburgh critic finding
little more than ordinary neatness in the remarkable
work which he has failed in appreciating, much as we
are astonished at the indifference with which he regards
it. It is the manner he has adopted for the expression
of his disappointment to which we object—how shall we
designate that manner ? The dictionary supplies us
with no epithet precisely applicable to it, excepting of a
coarse and vulgar kind. We shall not, therefore, at-
tempt its definition, We will allow the reader to judge
of the elegant style and refined feelings visible through-
out the criticism in question by a quotation. What
does he think, then, of a man presuming to understand a
poetical idealism, who writes such a sentence as the fol-
lowing "
After Daniel O'Connell then passes Lord Stanley; but as
we do not care for Lord Stanley so much as the poet does,
we will take the opportunity to blow our nose ; and by the time we
have returned our handkerchief to our pocket, some other notable
will be passing."

What delicacy of sentiment ! What a capacity for
reciprocating the purest emotions of the human heart !
Bah ! It only serves to remind one of the adage
" throwing pearls to swine." The treatment of this
anonymous poem in other quarters, while in substance it
has shown the diversity of opinion, has also in many
instances disclosed the degradation of humanity. We
say again—the degradation of humanity—for these sages
in nature and books have absolutely maligned the " New
Timon" as a poem of an immoral tendency. Surely,
after that, we should have little hesitation in
wagering that these men would see an indelicacy
in the naked figures of Canova's Graces, would
vilify as licentious the divine purity of the
recumbent Ariadne, and would look only with
lascivious eyes upon the Venus de Medici. Out
upon such literary prudes ! They turn from a block of
white and unsullied marble, thinking it flawed and
spotted, because they look through cracked spectacles
Brimmed with smoke.

" The blue sky seems flecked with blood ;
The sunshine on the floor looks black ;"
cries Beatrice, in the " Cenci :" Let these sticklers for
propriety take those words as their motto. They can
scarcely discover one more appropriate.

THE KNIGHT OF GIV YNNE. No. VI., By
Charles Lever.

We must acknowledge ourselves chagrined at the
hurried manner in which Mr. Lever finishes off the
episode of Gleeson's departure : after so much dramatic
preparation in the preceding chapters—after mustering
all the wrath of the elements and painting the commence-
ment of a pursuit by Bagenal Daly, which promised such
scenes of excitement in the channel, the matter is quietly
dropped by tho return of the pursuer with the intelli-
gence of the suicide of the pursued. Nevertheless, our
disappointment in one regard is compensated by our
satisfaction in another. The love passages between
Helen Darcy and Forester, are most tenderly and truth-
fully pourtrayed. Apropos of the latter, his lady-mother
writes him one scrap of inimitable advice; she warns
him, if he would render himself agreeable in society, to
abstain from telling anecdotes. There is not in
truth a more incorrigible nuisance in ;private life
than your professed anecdote-monger ; and we would
ourselves prefer the infliction of hearing the stereotyped
edition of " Joe Miller's Jest Book" recited, from the
title-page down to the finis, rather than undergo a single
hours' tete-a-tete with any conversationalist of this des-
cription. Besides monopolising the time and at-
tention of everybody else upon subjects of intense fri-
volity, these social delinquents, instead of entertaining,
are guilty of the most inexcusable egoism. Written
anecdotes, like those introduced by Charles Lever, are
allowable enough, seeing that they can readily be
" skipped" (as young ladies have it) whenever the
reader is disinclined for their perusal. From the
destruction impending the generous-hearted Knight of
Gwynne we anticipate no little entertainment. Mr.
Lever possesses such a mastery over the conventional
details of a fiction, and writes with such a spontaneous
glitter, that he cannot fail of sustaining his popularity.

KNIGHTS WEEKLY VOLUME.
Vols. C., CI., and Cll.

The variety of literary materials employed in this
admirable series is extraordinary ; and considerable
taste is displayed in the alternation of the different sub-
jects introduced. For example, in the three volumes
under consideration, we have a fanciful and not unlovely
hypothesis about "Flowers and their Associations," by
Anne Pratt ; then we have some animated letters de-
scriptive of " The Backwoods of Canada," embellished
with a multiplicity of woodcuts ; and, finally, the eighth
volume or the " Cabinet Portrait Gallery of British
Worthies," comprising biographies and engraved like-
nesses of Sir Mathew Hale, Andrew Marvell, Isaac
Barrow, Thomas Hobbes, Samuel Butler, and Lord
William Russell. Whatever the partiality may arise
from, we confess to an estimation for the last-
mentioned volume. The memoirs are agreeably
succinct, while they, likewise afford many interest-
ing particulars of some amongst the more remark-
able characters. Of these particulars, the most curious,
are unquestionably those appertaining to the domesticur,
habits of the illustrious Hobbes—Hobbes of Maim b
Aubrey's account of his habits, is especially
ing, and through it we fellow the old philosopher,
wisdom,
in body, and steadfast in the retention of
His
through the daily course habitual to en teesrt entertain-
ing, erecti n -
lk for promoting heat
scanty breakfast ; his sturdy
hissvameditativeness between
and expelling moisture ;
d a
(y, slumbers
rare, hisdevilish,
it) ; his laying
msmeoalksin;ghtiesnsoolritatwrje,
idvienne
to himself at mid-
night' scraps of memory, swimming before
; all theseadwamakneedintobbaecdco
n"
dassßobert
gppnrpipes
;s
cßohhfe tobaccotrr noi Burton hathi)d,-
tohuer
solemn
aasnrie d, . upon our imaginations
d affectino• im'age of the sage. Conveying
csoesmsi[bucicaehtionuss,:eful information, in so popular and so ac-
cessible Charles Knight's Weekly T olume de-
serves toabe about the most widely circulated of serial