The Sun.
London, England, 1833-09-02 00:00:00

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

By the proprietor's address to the public,
which forms a sort of introduction to the presen
number, we find that the Magazine is in future to
have little or no political bias, but be devoted
almost exclusively to literary matters. We think
this is a considerable improvement ; it is a re-
storation of the old character of the New
/1/6nthly, which, though highly popular as a
literary miscellany, was never much in demand
as a political vehicle. " On the Anonymous
in Periodicals," contains a satisfactory answer
to Mr. Bulwer's proposal, a favourite hobby
with him—that all periodical critics should at-
tach their names to their criticisms. Such a
proposal scarcely merited a reply, for it was mani-
festly an absurdity, and could never answer any
good end. " My acquaintance with the late
Edmund Kean," is from the pen of C. Grattan,
the author of that pleasant collection of tales,
" Highways and Byeways." It is an agreeable
little paper, full of anecdotes, many of them
more characteristic than any we have yet seen
of the late celebrated tragedian. The following
ingenious analogy may amuse ;

" Kean had not the discrimination to distinguish. per-
h lig not the good luck to meet with, any of the delightful
exceptions to the general :tile. The only " lord" he
could tolerate was Lord Byron—a fatal fancy on his part,
if, as I have reason to think, the example of the poet
influenced mo,t banefully the conduct of the astir. That
Byron himself was discontented with his greatness is very
certain—a humiliating caprice of Nature. Unsatisfied
with celebrity almost unbounded, he p inted for distinction
of a far less noble kind. Sated with admiration, he
longed to excite wonder. Fame was not enough for him,
—his ambition was too big for the sphere assigned him
by fate. In forcing it beyond that, the recoil was a death
stroke to both his reputation and his happiness.
" Who will refuse to see an analogy in character be-
tween Byron and his avowed archetype, Bonaparte ? It
must be sympathy which leads to imitation. And what
Byron was to Bonaparte, Kean most assuredly was to
Byron. My readers roust not be startled by the rappro-
chement, nor think that the greatest conqueror of the age
is degraded by forming one in the trinity to fame with the
greatest poet and the greatest actor. And, after all, which
was most a stage-player of the three? Was not the poli-
tical world the great theatre of Napoleon's deeds—the
social world of Byron's doings? Did not both act a part
from first to last? And was not Kean more an actor in
the broad gaze of London life than on the narrow boards
of Drury-lane? The generic signs of genius were com-
mon to them all ; and they were undoubtedly of the same
species of mind. Had their relative positions been re-
versed, their individual career had most probably been the
sime, or nearly so. Reckless, restless, adventurous, in-
temperate; brain fevered by success, desperate in reverse;
seeking to outdo their own destiny for good, and rushing
upon dangers and difficulties, which they delighted first
to make, and then to plunge within.
" Napoleon in Egypt, Byron in Greece, Kean in
Canada—each at the head of his wild and half savage tribe
—present an .logies which the shades of the sceptered
soldier and the I quelled lord must not take fright at. They
were each, on their several stages, acting the self same
part—straining for the world's applause, not labouring for
their own delight; and though there was more greatness
in the one instance, and more glory in the other, the
inspiratinn was, perhaps, precisely similar in all. The
grand distinction in favour of Napoleon was, all through,
not that he was an Emperor, but that he was an original.
Byron was an extravagant copy—Kean an absurd one.
" But if we take the closing scenes of the three—St.
Helena, Missolonghi, Richmond ; and it requires no
overstretch of fancy to trace the parellel—Kean had the
great advantage, in the a.suaging farewell of an only
child, and the embraces of an injured but relenting wife,
from which latter the premature death of his had debarred
Napeleon,and which distance (let us hope) alone denied to
Byron."

" Dick Doleful" is a sprightly bit of gossip,
by the author of Paul Pry. " The First of Sep-
tember" is written with much gusto. The de-
scriptions are remarkable for their spirit and
fidelity. " Post-mortem cogitations of the late
popular Mr. Smith," like Johnson's Charles
the Twelfth, " point a moral and adorn a tale."
The story, however, might have been told with
more vigour. " Monthly Commentary" will
furnish amusement for an idle half-hour. We
quote some reflections suggested by the mad-
ness—this is the first time we have heard of it
—of De Bourrienne, to whom the world is in-
debted for the most analytical and authentic
memoir of the earlier days of Napoleon.

" DE BOUARIENNE'S MADNESS.-They who read
the Memoirs of I3ourrienne with interest, and in this
country that number was not small, will learn with regret
that a late visit to one or the lunatic institutions of France
revealed the melancholy form of the poor ex• Secretary of
the mighty ex-Emperor.What a termination to a tortuous
career ! What a mystery is the brain ! Read the Me-
moirs of Bourrienne, and say who appeared to have a cooler
head, a more worldly view of lite, a more exact appreci
ation of charicter and of events than the author; and yet
all of a sudden the mental structure totters and down it
comes with a crash, involving all it reaches in eternal
confusion, irremedial ruin. De Bourrienne is only one of
very many whose intellects have sunk under the intensity
of the Napoleon era. But the remat kable a•ure
mental diseise of this character is, that the cord snaps on
the instant. Compare Bourrienne's Memoirs, just finished
previous to this melancholy event, from end to end, the
close is as collected as the beginning; there is neither
flagging in vigour of ihought nor in fullness of information,
and yet no sooner was the work done than the machine
stopped. The brain is material, hut the intellect follows
none of the laws Pl' matter—it does not decay, it disappears
and leaves its place vacant. "It ne faut qu'un Uwe.
accident, qu'un atome deplace pour te faire perir, pour te
ravir cette intelligence, dont to parais si fier." One of
the best works that has lately appeared in E trope on the
awful subject of mental disc Ise, is that of Dr. Uwins ; he
gives himself up not to theories little less wild than the
hallucinations of his patients, but to ohserving and record-
ing the phenomena that present themselves in the cases
that come before him. Can anything be more eloquent
than this description of a state of active nullity, a volition
dtad, and a power of thought spinning away without
balance, weights, or guide? • " I have asked patients
sometimes their motives for refusing to speik, and the
answers I receive are various. In one instance I Was
struck with the affecting account a patient gave of his
feelings. It seemed, he told me, As if I could and could
not, or as if I would and wouid not, in such a strange
way, that though silence was the result of the conflict,
felt in a manner guilt connect itself with my silence.' Well
may we exclaim with Hamlet, ' What a piece of work is
man "