The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-26 00:00:00

LITERLTURE,

The Poetical TVorks of Henry Wadsworth Long-
fellow. Edited and Prefaced by Robert
Buchanan. Vol. I. Edward Moxon and Co.
Apropos to Professor Longfellow's recent, or
shall we say present visit (his fourth) to England,
the Messrs. Moxon are now, in their recognized
capacity as the Poets' Publishers, issuing from the
press a very charming collective reprint of the
Poetical Works of that greatest living representa-
tive of American literature. The first volume
is the only one which has yet made its appear-
ance. But, although merely a first volume of a
new edition, it justifies us in welcoming it at once
as the most compact and beautiful edition which has
yet, in this country at least, made its appear-
ance. Costlier editions there no doubt are—edi-
tions de luxe adorned with edges of gold, and
covers of morocco, and embellishments daintily
drawn and exquisitely engraved—but for an edition
intended simply for reading, and treasuring up, and
carrying about in one's pocket, or in one's valise,
commend us to this handiest and completest of them
all, published by Messrs. Moxon, and edited and
prefaced by Robert Buchanan. how " Edited" by
Mr. Buchanan wo hardly know ; but, " Prefaced"
ic certainly is by him, and that, too, very grace-
fully. At the same time we cannot but regard it
as wholly uncalled for that, incidentally in one per-
' tion of his brief yet sufficient Preface, the Editor of
this new Edition of Longfellow should go out of his
way to assert very invidiously that the American
poet's " Evangeline " is immeasurable supe-
rior to Goethe's " Herman and Dorothea." " Her-
man and Dorothea," says Mr. Buchanan, has the
great distinctive merit and advantage, of course, of
being the precursor or predecessor of "Evangeline :"
but otherwise, according to him, Goethe's poem is
in no way to be named in the same breath with
Longfellow's. Now, we yield to no one in our
admiration for the exquisite grace and tenderness
of that transatlantic idyll of "Evangeline." And yet
—against this dictum so depreciatory of Goethe's
idyllic masterpiece, we must, and do protest, as at
once ungrateful and undeserved. Say whatever Mr.
Buchanan may to the contrary, " Herman and
Dorothea" commands, and will ever command, the
tears and love of all those who know what an idyll
ought to be. The foremost to assert this
would, we feel certain, be Longfellow himself.
And, for one, we could never understand,
we shall never be able to understand, the good taste
or the wisdom of those who, to praise one man,
must needs, to that end, depreciate another. As
an idyll of perfect b.?auty, " Herman and Doro-
thea" has never yet been surpassed, even, pace Mr.
Buchanan, by the " Evangeline" of Professor Long-
fellow. Nominally the first volume of this collec-
tive edition of the Poetical Works of Longfellow,
contains his narrative poems—such, for example, as
" Evangeline," and " Hiawatha," and the " Court-
ship of Miles Standish," and the " Tales from a
Wayside Inn," and minor poems, let us add, like
" Excelsior" and "The Village Blacksmith." But,
even here, we cannot understand why, among other
poems of a like character, place should not have been
found for such a complete miniature narrative
as that of " The Slave's Dream." Probably, the
Editor would reply, Because its production, apart
here, would destroy the completeness of the collec-
tion of poems, afterwards to be introduced, having
especial relation to the question of Slavery. Proof
positive, this is, however, as we regard it, that the
sib-division here hit upon for the Poetical Works of
Professor Longfellow, as a whole, is one purely ar-
bitrary in its character. Whatever may be thought
in regard to these points of detail, however, the
present Edition is, in all essential particulars, we
repeat, charming, and ought to he welcomed, as no
doubt it will be welcomed, accordingly.

The Complete Correspondence and Works of Charles
Lamb. With an Essay on his Life and Genius
by George Augustus Sala. Vol. I. pp., 537.
Edward Moxon and Co.
Nothieg could well be handsomer in its " g"-
up" and general appearance, internal and extern;
than this first volume of a comprehensive at
collective reprint of Charles Lamb's Works re
Correspondence. Yet, here, upon the very thrt
hold, we cannot but feel ourselves constrained
take exception to the very title of the book as a who
and to the very lettering of that title upon
back of it. As it appears here, in regard to t.
title, the Correspondence takes precedence of t
Works, while, in regard to the lettering of tl
title on the outside of the volume, the CORRE
PONDENCE, appears in big capitals, the Won
in little capitals underneath, with the insignificau
almost of an ampisand. And the peculiarity
this disportionate arrangement is borne out by the
circumstance that Volume One, instead of being
devoted to the pro luction of " Elia," or of "Rosamond
Gray," or of " John Woodvil," or of the " Poems"
—" Album Verses" Mr. Sala calls them deprecia-
tingly in his rather supercilious Prefatory Essay
(though for our own part we should certainly not
dub as mere Album verses such a true poem as
" Old Familiar Faces")—Volume One, we say, in-
stead of containing anything of all this, com-
prises within it Charles Lamb's Correspondence,
and (barring Mr. Sala's Essay) nothing but
his Correspondence. It makes a goodly tome
for all that cf from 500 to 600 pages of delightful
chit-chat (prattle Thackeray would call it), in
the shape of off-hand letters from Charles Lamb
to Coleridge, to Southey, to the IVordsworths, to
Manning, to the llazlitts, and to the Quaker Poet
Barton. With Mr. Sala's Essay we are almost, dis-
posed to quarrel—it is so undisguisedly and per-
versely depreciatory. Ile at any rate is not in-
fected with that disease of Biographers or Biogra-
phical essayists, which Lord Macaulay happily
defined as the Liles Boswelliana. Nothing of that
sort. On the contrary—reading this essay we find
Mr. Sala grumbling, through we don't know how
many discursive pages, over the little that Charles
Lamb after all has written. Pity he did not write
more ! That is the whole drift of his argu-
ment. A lamentation that might be ap-
plied with much more force and reason
to Thomas Gray or to Iloratius Flaccus. When in
point of fact it is the quality and not the quantity
that the true critic looks to. Bat, even then, Mr.
Sala, when he comes to descant upon the little that
(according to his showing) Charles Lamb did write,
tells us that after all there were only about
half-a-dozen of the Essays of Elia (he obliges us
with their names) that were really and truly so very
remarkable ! For the rest of them he says—Why,
dear me, many others have written quite as well !
Such and sack an Essay of Elia, says he (naming it)
—Why, surely we all know in regard to that that
it is not a bit better than such and such a
paper (naming it too) among the " Sketches by
Boz." Such and such another Elian Essays (nam-
ing it)-INrhy, Thackeray wrote quite as cleverly
in such and such a number of his Yellow-plush.
And so forth. All this, in a preliminary " Essay
on the Life and Genius of Charles Lamb !" And
that too an essay written itself in a style so
helter-skelter and at random that it speaks in one
part almost indignantly of the superlative excellence
of all (!) Defoe's writings, makes mention of Leman
Blanchard, talks of Off Alley, in the Adelphi, between
Duke-street and Buckingham-street, and outrages
the reader at page x. with such an egregious slip
of bad grammar as—" Under different circum-
stances [he is at his old work, depreciating Elia]
he might have been as copious and infinitely more
edifying than Horace Walpole." Again—where he is
incidentally touching ulna Thomas de Qiincey (as
he touches upon almost everything and everybody
in turn apropos des buttes)---he extorts from us, by
a most astounding diebon of his in regard to the
effects, or rather the non-effects, as he would
have us believe, of opium—he extorts from us our
most positive assurance (we speak not by any
means as opium-eaters, but as having once most
effectually partaken of opium) that it, opium,
does give mental and bodily pleasure, and that,
moreover, pleasure of the most exquisite descrip-
tion. Altogether, we cannot but regard this ['roll-
minary Essay on the Life and Genius of Charles
Lamb, by Mr. Sala, as a mistake. But, as for the
edition itself, judging it from the first volume, it
is one deserving a place of honour upon the book-
, shelves of any library, however fastidiously selected.