The Sun.
London, England, 1833-10-28 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

QUARTERLY RE VIE TV. No. XCIX.

LONDON 1833.

The article in this Number which will ex-
cite the most attention, and which is evidently
meant to act as a sort of monster-mortar to batter
down the Whig trenches—as a Congreve-rocket
to burst and spread dismay in the Whig citadel—
is the one on " the Reform Ministry and the
Reformed Parliament." From the praises it
somewhat fulsomely lavishes on his osAn saga-
city, we attribute this bright effusion to the pen
of Mr. Croker. It speaks of his Burke-like
prescience in foretelling that the Reform Bill
will, one day or other, develop a revolu-
tionary tendency, in the same triumphant man-
ner in which another Croaker, in the " Good-
natured Man," alludes to his own similar powers
of prophecy. " I told the old lady she would
die one day or other, and now you see I am
right." One day or other, too, Mr. Croker
will be right ; for this reason, that his prediction
is of such convenient latitude that it is impos-
sible it should eventually be wrong. If we ex-
cept this display of unerring sagacity, the article
possesses not one iota of merit. It is noisy and
blustering, but inconsistent and inconclusive.
It is also sour, morose, and by no means scru-
pulous in its regard for facts : indeed it deals so
largely in fiction, that it reads like a romance,
in which light we shall proceed to view it. The
plot, then, of this wild fiction, though evidently
got up with great care, i 3 full of perplexity. It
perpetually teazes us by promising an unravel-
went which it never fulfils. The characters are
still worse. Lord Brougham, who is the mon-
ster of the piece, is a weak imitation of Franken-
stein. The author, whose avowed object is to
work out a fine Tory moral by disgusting the
reader with his Whig hero, has the ill-luck to
mar his intentions at every step of his progress
He strives to create a prejudice against him by
hinting in every scene that he is the avowed
patron of corruption, apparently not being at
all aware of the inference to which every clear-
sighted reader must come, namely, that if such
had really been the case, no Tory romance-
writer would have put pen to paper against his
Lordship, for this reason, that he would have
been advocating Tory principles—playing the
Tory game. In a word, Mr. Croker has taken
" sling and stone," and singled out the Lord
Chancellor for attack, :not because he is the
patron, but because he is the foe, of corruption
But the issue of the conflict will be against the
poet of " Talavera." He is no David, though
his adversary is a Goliah. Among the minor
personages of Mr. Croker's romance, William
Cobbett figures with peculiar effect, as an angel
of light to contrast with the demon darkness of
the Chancellor's character. As for Sir E. Sug-
den, he is introduced and dismissed in a paren-
thesis ; but then, to make up for this defect, we
have a fine full-length of the Duke of Wel-
lington, grim as life—and about as sagacious.
As a specimen of the descriptive powers of this
romance (which we doubt not will soon be
dramatized as a farce for the Adelphi), we sub-
join the introductory passage. Though a mani-
fest plagiarism from one of Mr. Cooper's best
scenes in the " Pilot," it is not without merit :

" His Majesty's Government have fitted out a vessel for
a long and perilous voyage of discovery. Some experienced
shipwrights and sailors, who witnessed her equipment,
pronounced that she was unfit for such an arduous service
—that she was ill-planned, ill. built, ill-formed, ill-stowed
—and so crank and overmasted that, in anything like a
stiff hretze, she would be found unable to carry her royals.
Well, she leaves Deptford, and drops down the river—she
is found not to answer her helm—twice she runs aground
and is backed off by main force, but, favoured by the
weather and the tide, she at last, after a greater expense
of time and labour than was ever before known, is an-
chored at the Nore ; and then her constructor turns round
in triumph and asks, whether she has not disproved and
refuted all the unfavourable prognostics which were made
about her ?—as if passing Gravesend were doubling Cape
Horn— as if floating one tide down the Thames were a
voyage round the world."

" Great Britain in 1833" is a smart vituperative
notice of poor Baron d'Haussez's late production.
We have no fault to find with this spirit of this
article ; though not a little surprised and diverted
at finding a puff on our old unreformed Con-
stitution as the " admiration and envy of the
world"—we had hoped this Tory cant was de-
funct—thrust into the very heart of a passage
discussing the comparative merits of French and
English cookery ! Perhaps the thoughts of his
own constitution, as influenced by the gastro-
nomical peculiarities of the two rival countries,
led the reviewer, by a natural train of reasoning,
to indulge in a sympathetic reminiscence of the
constitution of the body politic. In this article
occurs the following amusing anecdote :

" We recollect being once present in a club dining-room,
when a gentleman, who had lately been in the north of
Europe, called before dinner for some dried fish, cheese,
caviare, or other articles, which we generally eat at the close
of dinner. ' Bless my soul !' exclaimed old Lord Alus-
kerry, who was sitting by, ' there is a gentleman eating
bis dinnentoackwurd.' "

" The Duchess of Berry in La Vendee"
adopts rather a liberal view of the question, and
treats the late Carlist crusade of the frantic, but
generous and high-spirited Royalist with marked
contempt and reprobation. The Judas who
betrayed her is spoken of as such an unadul-
terated scoundrel deserves. Speaking of this
wretch, :General Dermoncourt, a stanch revo-
lutionist, who arrested the Duchess, well ob-
served—

"I should never pass him in the street without bestow-
ing a horsewhipping upon him, did I not think my horse
would be degraded by being afterwards Hogged with the
same whip."

" Cunningham's Lives of the Painters" no-
tices an able, or, at any rate, an amusing work,
in temperate, guarded terms of praise. The
private, as well as the public character of Sir
Thomas Lawrence, is well pourtrayed in this
review. Despite what his biographer alleges to
the contrary, we cannot but look on the late
President as a male coquette. He had little heart
but lots of sentiment, which, in the fashionable
world, we believe, answers the purpose quite as
well, if nof better. He had a smile, a soil
whisper, and a squeeze of the hand, for every
woman—affection for none ; not even for his first
love, Miss Siddons, or the last object of his
" Platonic flirt ation," Mrs. Wolfe. " Life and
Parliamentary Works of Archdeacon Coxe,"
is chiefly remarkable for a singular revelation it