The Sun.
London, England, 1866-02-20 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TEE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

THE " SATURDAY REVIEW" ON M. DE BOISSY.—
The Marquis de Boissy has fired off his annual
popgun on the subject of England, and France, and
things in general. His dislike of the English has
been excited to an almost extraordinary degree this
year by the friendly festivities of the allied fleets,
and by the conclusion at which he has arrived, after
prolonged conferences with his maritime friends,
that, though the French ships are as good as ours,
the English guns are incomparably better than the
French. He is proud to be able to announce to the
French Senate that, if he knows anything of France,
the recent demonstrations of friendliness are the
merest hypocrisy, and that unabated enmity con-
tinues to flourish between the two nations and their
two navies. He trusts that the day will yet arrive
for a descent upon the English coast. If ever that
improbable event occurs, we can only say that we
hope, in our turn, that the Marquis de Boissy will
be in the van, that he will give us as much quarter
as can be reasonably expected from so prodigious a
warrior, and be content with taking us all prisoners.
The programme to which he invites the attention of
the Senate and the Imperial Government is indeed
a remarkable one. First and foremost figures a
rupture with our perfidious selves. Fenianism de-
serves to be encouraged, and M. de Boissy, who in
his lucid intervals appears to be a pious person,
thanks Heaven that England is about to undergo
the misery of internal revolution. But England is
not the only country on which he has got his eye.
The annexation of Belgium forms the second part
of his plan. And here M. de Boissy takes occasion
again to reprehend the hypocritical benevolence
that has characterised the language of those high in
authority on the other side of th Channel. The
French Emperor has expressed to the present King
of Belgium his sympathy and condolence on the
death of the venerable King Leopold. The French
Emperor has done wrong. Ever since the Treaty
of Vienna, Leopold was an enemy of France; and
when M. de Boissy sees an enemy of his country
" stricken down by the justice of God," M. de
Boissy "cannot weep." " Je ne pleurniche pas un
De Profundis; non; je chante un Te Deum. Je
ne pleure pas quand ii meurt, je m'en rejouis." Lan-
guage so revolting to common decency provoked the
ill-concealed impatience of M. de Boissy's audience.
Ministers, Bishops, and Senators rose to protest
against the outrage offered to humanity and cour-
tesy ; but M. de Boissy is accustomed to continue
in spite of interruptions, and he did not pause in
his triumphant course till he had thrice routed the
absent, and as often trampled on the dead. Like
Alexander, he then sighed for victories over another
world. Turning to the Americans, whom he cha-
racterised as a brave but brutal nation, and one
whose sole redeeming point is their antipathy to all
that is English, he proceeded to regret the close of
the bloody war. His prayer to heaven, he acknow-
ledges, would rather have been that the Americans
might go on slaughtering one another until the
French troops were safely out of Mexico. There
is no difficulty in believing that such sentiments are
the genuine fruit of M. de Boissy's gentle bosom,
but when he assures us that he speaks the real sen-
timents of France, we must be pardoned for
suspecting that he is not a specimen of French
legislative manners. If ever the time comes for
such ideas to become popular across the Channel,
our French neighbours will have for ever forfeited
their right to be considered a civilised and gallant
nation. It is curious to learn that M. de Boissy,
with all this bravado, does not speak of much per-
sonal dignity. Once or twice during his singular
harangue he entreated the indulgence of his brother
senators, on the quaint ground that he is but a
" little fellow." Lord Macaulay s New Zealander,
should he ever come across M. de Boissy's speech,
and be ignorant of everything about that gentleman
except what he learns from its contents, will natu-
rally come to the conclusion that he is pursuing the
political manifesto of both a furious and a small-
sized monkey.
' THE " SPECTATOR" ON THE EMBRYO REFORM
BILL.—Lord Cranbourne and his co-catechists,
Mr. Bouverie and his co-confessors, managed to
make the Government feel a good deal more uncom-
fortable yesterday week, concerning that unfortu-
nate little Reform Bill which they have so rashly
promised without any:conviction on the subject, than
they have yet been. The truth is that the Govern-
ment are a good deal in the position of the princes
or princesses in the fairy tales who are bound to
have an opinion on the solution of some detestable
enigma by a certain moment, on pain of losing their
heads, and who are quite unable to have any opinion
at all, if it were to save their lives. There is a Ger-
man story of a horrid little imp who is to annex the
Queen's baby at a given date, unless in the interval
she can guess his name, and who goes about in the
interval singing to himself in private and solitary
places—" To-day I brew, to-morrow I bake, the
next day a little stranger bring ; little does my lady
think my name is Rumpelstiltzchen." But in that
case the Queen is fortunate enough to have an
emissary in a solitary wood, who overhears the little
wretch, so that she knows his name in due time, and
she keeps her little stranger to herself. We fear
that will not be the fate of her Majesty's Govern-
ment. Mr. Disraeli has this advantage over the
little imp in question, that he does not know the
talismanic name himself any better than the ad-
visers of the Queen, who are bound to guess it by a
given time under pain of losing their " little
stranger," and probably their life too. So he can-
not, fortunately for him, confide it to himself and
be overheard by the emissaries of the Government.
Nobody seems to know what the answer to this
terrible sphink riddle is, and, what is worse for the
Government, nobody seems to care. Every one
explains to them with exquisite candour what the
magic formula to be attained is like, how it must
be a comprehensive formula that will satisfy the
thoughts of many hearts, but not a too comprehen-
sive formula that will satisfy the thoughts of too
many hearts. In the meantime the miserable Go-
vernment send out their emissaries in the dim hope
that some information may " turn up" some reve-
lation of the magic formula, and tell all inquirers in
the House of Commons that they are writing for
"returns." Lord Cranbourne presses innocently to
know—" what" ret'irns? Sir G. Grey cannot ex-
actly tell -what. If he only knew what returns
are really wanted, he would perhaps not need
them at all. The unfortunate emissaries are
prowling for information, the unfortunate Go-
vernment hoping they may be able to have a sort
of opinion whenever the prowlers come back. But
on the whole they are very much in the position of
Mr. Micawber, who, when his friends recommended
him to engage iu carrying coals on the Medway, im-
mediately " ran down to take a look at the Med-
way." The friends of the Government have recom-
mended them to do something with the franchise,
and they have at once sent out emissarries " to take
a look at the franchise." This sort of thing never
comes to any good, and we fear it is now but too
evident that we shall get no Reform Bill worth dis-
cussing out of the Government as at present con-
stituted. Mr. Bouverie and Sir H. Hoare, both

good Liberals, and probably, speaking for a large
number of other equally good Liberals, declared
yesterday week that they would have nothing to say
to what is called a " single-barrelled" Reform Bill,
that is a Reform Bill which only opens the question
of Reform, instead of closing it. We think they are
perfectly right. What the country wants now is
not men who will try to guess the incommunicable
secret of what the country wish, for the country do
not know what they wish on any point except one
—the only one on which the Government are dis-
posed to thwart them—that they do wish to have an
equitable arbitration, which will lay the question
for a generation at least to rest. We need in this
matter a Government with a conviction. Almost
any moderate conviction covering the whole subject,
expressed with weight and carried with a high hand,
would have a fair chance of success. So weary is
the country of being asked to decide a matter on
which it is really not profoundly interested enough
to decide, that any moderate opinion strongly and
authoritatively expressed, backed by the whole
weight of the Administration, and sensibly dimi-
nishing the two principal grounds of complaint
which now exist against our representative system,
would have doubtless a very fair prospect before it,
whether it complied with the conditions laid down
by the soundest political thinkers or not. But that
it must sensibly diminish both the ground of com-
plaint urged by the working classes—that they are
not at all represented—and the ground of complaint
urged by the Northern capital and intelligence—
that it is represented with absurd insufficiency, and
without any proportion at all to the variety
and magnitude of its interests and importance—this
is to us quite evident. Without providing some
alleviation for both evils, any alleviation applied to
either separately would only open the prospect of a
longer and more exciting agitation on behalf of the
other. As Sir H. Hoare, we think, suggested, and
Mr. Bright has virtually admitted, that is precisely
what the Radicals wish. They want to let off only
one barrel now, in order that they may have all the
other barrels of the revolver undischarged for the
greater emergencies which may be expected in future.
But then that is not what the country wish. There
is but one point on which the mind of the country is
clear, and that is to do such justice that it may get
fairly to work at the ends of legislation without
being pestered any more for the time about the mere
means and machinery. For our own part, we think
the £6 franchise—whether rental or rating—bad in
itself—quite insufficient for the immediate object of
giving a substantial representation to the working
classes, and very dangerous in its ultimate logical
results. Moreover, if it is to stand alone, it will
aggravate the other evil, which it does not directly
deal with—that evil of small corrupt boroughs—by
introducing a new class of ignorant and corrupt
voters into them. So that what the Government
really propose is a hesitating and uncertain treat-
ment of a double disease, in a way likely to alleviate
for the moment the symptoms of one, to aggravate
permanently those of the other, and certain ulti-
mately to introduce a third disease. A physician
who should treat a man suffering from neuralgia
and a very irritable stomach, with opium, so as to
soften the pain of the neuralgia, aggravatethe weak-
ness of the stomach, and form a habit of dependence
on opium as a nervous stimulant, would certainly
be thought a very bad physician, and it seems to us
that this is what the Government propose with re-
spect to reform. They should not have promised a
bill at all, without a sincere and almost imperious
conviction on the subject. The weak tentative atti-
tude which they are now taking injures them seri-
ously as a Government with the country, and holds
out no hope of a special success with regard to the
particular measure. When will they learn that a
teacher must speak with authority if he hopes to
make learners learn ? A schoolmaster asking his
class what they would like him to say, is not a more
deplorable spectacle than that presented by Lord
Russell with regard to reform.
" THE READER" ON SHAKSPERIAN LITERATURE.
—The most wonderful thing in reference to Shaks-
pere is that astonishing mass of mingled erudition
and rubbish which we have heaped up in his name.
We have buried him under a mountain of annota-
tion, conjecture, and bibliographical romance, such
as the world has never seen before, and has little
chance of ever seeing again. No man living,
although he may have devoted his life exclusively
to the subject, is acquainted with the full extent to
which we have carried this mania. There is hardly
a particle of Shakspere's life and writings which
has not been made the subject of independent ana-
tomical investigation in books, pamphlets, periodi-
cals, papers read at learned societies, and lectures
delivered in every city, town, and hamlet in the
kingdom. The confidence with which opinions
have been asserted concerning him is not more re-
markable than their infinite variety and divergence.
One writer maintains he was a Roman Catholic,
another that he was a Protestant, and both with
equal vehemence and a tolerably equal display of
evidence worth nothing. Literary ingenuity has
passed through all the horrors of the rack to deter-
mine the profession or occupation to which he was
bred, and which he abandoned for the vagrant life
of a player. Thus Shakspere has been represented
by different writers, on grounds so loose that they
might be appropriately called shifting sands, as
having been in his youth a schoolmaster, a dealer
in wool, a butcher, a lawyer's clerk (upon which
conjecture Lord Campbell condescended to enter
the arena), a sailor, a soldier, a botanist, a chemist,
and a medical student. He cannot have avoided all
these callings—he may have been engaged in one
or two of them ; but not an atom of proof can be
adduced that he ever belonged to any of them. The
tales, novels, love-pamphlets, and histories upon
which be founded, or is supposed to have founded
his plays ; the old plays he worked up into new
ones; and the books which conjecture sets down as
forming his " library," have each and all of them
supplied topics for endless treatises, and disserta-
tions. His " learning" has given employment of
the gravest kind to the critical faculties of Farmer,
Prescott, and Whalley, who concur Only in spurning
the authority of Ben Jonson and Aubrey, who must
have been better informed on the matter than any
of them. His " ignorance" is just now occupying
the attention of Mr. Walter Thornbury, who is
publishing a series of papers on things concerning
which Shakspere is silent, and which he is therefore
presumed to have known nothing about. This is, at
least, getting into a new region. Having pretty
well exhausted the things Shakspere knew, we
are now invited to consider the things he did not
know. Upon miscellaneous subjects, general and
special, there is no end of books. One writer has
published " Reflections from Shakspere's Cliff, with
a Glance at Calais Cliff ;" which latter eminence
must have been discerned through the " mind's
eye" of the reflector. Another admiring student
collects Shakspere's " Moral Sentiments and
Similes," and ruminates thereupon. Ulrici and
Rudloff composed elaborate treatises to show the
relations of Shakspere to Calderon, Schiller, and
Goethe. Mr. Townsend wrote a book to prove
that he was " not an impostor ;" and Mr. Smith
wrote another to prove that he was Bacon. Mr.
Green dedicated a volume to the genealogy of his
crab-tree ; and Mr. Patterson another to the natural
history of the insects mentioned in his plays. Drake
and Douce, and a hundred more, have dug up and
illustrated every imaginable feature of his " Times,"
an expansive field, to which there appears no limit,
and which you may plough for ever without reach-
ing the bottom. His gleaners and collectors are as
multitudinous as midges in the sun. One collects
his jests, another his proverbs, a third his aphorisms,
a fourth his wit and wisdom, a fifth and sixth, more
excruciating than the others, his " Pearls" and
" Beauties." Ayscough, Twiss, and Dolby have
compiled Indices of his works ; Becket and Clarke
Concordances ; and Dictionaries of Quotations crop
up as fast as mushrooms. As to the editions of his
Plays we say nothing. His sonnets have given
birth to a distinct race of commentators and critics
—Boaden, Barnstorff, Brown, Bolton Corney,
Chasles, and we know not how many more. It is
Babel travestied amongst those gentlemen. Schlegel
and Coleridge differ from Hallam ; and no two are
found in perfect agreement. Chalmers thinks that
the sonnets were addressed to Queen Elizabeth ;
Tyrwhitt, Farmer, and half a dozen others, think
that some of them were addressed to a man, but
differ as to which ; and Mr. Brown is at consider-
able pains to prove that they are not sonnets at all.
The controversy about Mr. W. H., the " begetter
of the sonnets," is simply chaos. Who was he ?
Hart, a nephew of Shakspere's, says Farmer ; a
man of the name of Hughes, says Tyrwhitt ; the
Earl of Southampton, says Drake ; the Earl of
Pembroke, says Brown ; and no other than the
" divine Williams" himself, says Herr 13arnstorff.
Go IT, Dizzy !—ln office and out of office (says
the Saturday Review) Mr. Disraeli has of late years
shown a consistent form of versatility which has
become simply tedious. Bland, courteous, deferen-
tial, almost " 'umble" to foes as well as friends, he
has by this time played out that game. He must
come out in some other character during the present
session. An Opposition leader cannot afford to sink
into au accepted bore. Mr. Disraeli is now fairly
pitted against one whom he must, whether he wills
it or not, treat simply as an equal. The genius
which quailed before a Palmerston must assert itself
against a Gladstone, It is open to Mr. Disraeli to
repeat his old strategy, and to bait the leader of the
House of Commons nightly. Perhaps, however,
the day for this sort of thing has gone by. Mr.
Disraeli is no longer young, and his powers of
secreting sarcasm may be enfeebled. But anyhow,
if Mr. Gladstone is as thin-skinned and irritable as
the tiger he has with the tiger's temper, much of
the tiger's strengih of claw and jaw. It may not
be as safe to poke up Gladstone as it was to snarl at
the pachydermatous reel. One thing at any rate is

certain—Mr. Disraeli must come out. There is one
political virtue which he has not yet simulated in
all its completeness: it is that of calm, solid patriot-
ism. He might try that character. Yet his rehearsal
for the part in the theatre of Oxford, when he came
forward as the mere obedient son and orthodox in-
terpreter of the faith, met with such a merry recep-
tion that it may be doubted whether he will con-
tinue in the part. And as he has exhausted all that
artistic dulness could do for him in the Way of
attracting confidence, he will perhaps find it, after
all, most convenient to fall back, if he can, on his
old brilliancy. The fingers may be stiffening, and
the powers of patter may be less ready than they
were ; but to a veteran actor an old sham is better
than a new one. Moreover, a great party is not
slow to discover that, if the candle won't shine, it
must be snuffed out ; and Mr. Disraeli has not (tome
to this. He must do something in the next five
months, and whatever he does will relieve the ses-
sion from that dense cloud of stupidity which has of
late years befogged Parliament, and from that dul-
ness to which he has himself so largely contributed•