The republic. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1849-1853, 1853-02-24
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ne mare couPB 81 Fhaekeray paragraphs. In
commenting Hfek :or 30 ago on the charge
brought against - Atresican press by an article
in FSossr's Maga4hs on "Thackeray in America
we alluded to u superior liberties take in that
line By our Eugtrh contemporaries. The follow
ing, from one ofx3be last umbers of the Londor,
Spectator, (Jangary 22;) is an illustration of this
subject, provin4 *hat the English press-for the
Spectator is jusl1 considered most iudicious.
sdecorous journa And is q fair example-takes
liberty of persotd comment rarely employed up-
der similar distances in the United States In
a SpectGor articl& ION the marriage of Louis Napo-
leon, in which t& writer asks: sis the Emperor
cold?' and answNEs "No, but be wears mask,
we have, as ifiusQ ations:
w no would f4ect in one Of the most graceful
song writers OF re day-a gentleman, delicate in
tongue, mannerEand frame, as any that could
grace craving Foom-the pussant pugiIist who
has taught the d8yman to discern the difference
between b1gness#nd .'bioodr Look at that still
more illustrious. pig smiling, round faced man,
rosy scheeked andkgrcy haired-an elderly Cupid,
'ony not handsome - bfandiy surveying all things
with an air of pleased quescence, and say If In
him you detect the eharpest satirist which our
tongue has known, the most BRILLIANT with the
deepest shades since his uncongeniaI congenial
model, Swift,
Another point of comment in the Literory
Worid, was the defence of Thackeray's lectures
from an attack in one ofthe religious newspapers,
on the ground Of their healthy treatment of such
diseased literary specimens as Congreve, and other
loose writers OF Queen Anne's time. We have this
striking remark this subject, in an article on
Mr.. Thackeray's lectures, in the Philadelphia
North american, which bears the initial of its
writer, Mr.. w. B. Reed;
Everybody knows something about Swift: but
OF Congreye (of course the remark has no appIica-
ton to Addison) we undertake to say and to be
thankful for it, too not one in fifty in Mr. Thack
eray's audience knew more about him than thai
he wrote comedies, full of naughty wit; that Dr.
johnson found but one poetical passage Ito my
taste rather doubtful one) in all his poems, and
that very common quotation Music hath charms
to soothe,' &C.. is to be detected, hidden away in
one of his tragedies; so far hidden, by the by that
few know where to find it. Yet this exhalatiun
which shot up brightly and lie now forgotten, Mr..
Ihackeray made clear and distinct to our vision.
He made it, too in its brightness shed light on the
dismal scene of depravity around No professed
morallst ever uttered s,erner or more eloquent
OF those times of pestilence than
did Mr.. Thackeray in his brief criticism of the
comic dramatists OF the Restoration. Mr. Macsu-
lays denunCiation OF them familiar to every
reader-'the foreheads of bronze, heads like the
nether mlistone, and tongues set on fire of heli,'
is more vehement, but not a jot more impressive,
than was that of the novelist the other night
sin the brief oriticsm attempted on the lecture
on Swift, spoke of il the revelation of the bu.
REQ city ana LIE inhabitants, with all their
and emblerns of deformity and nastinese hung
around them But last evening the lecturer ap.
plying the same illustration to the buried manners
OF the time of the Restoration, its drama, and its
poetry, gave It a force and beautiful application
which no hearer will soon forget The SIX ull of
the jester in the hand OF the traveller and the form
of the dancing girl, left in the ashes which destroy
ed her, will iv long in the memory OF those who
listened TO MIR. Thackeray's criticism the man.
ners and morals which Congreve's poems and dra-
mas illustrate"
The notice of Swift, alluded 10, lie in previous
article in the same journal:
with one thing no one could fail being struck
the skill-the careless and therefore graceful
skiil--with which, In brief hour, be succeeded in
bringing Swift, and such of his contemporaries as
he pleased to put on canvas, before our eyes,
hardly pursuing the narrative form, and jumping
from one period 10 another in those eighty wears
OF volcanic liie 1t was literally exposing the bu-
ried city, showing us how the dead once lived as
well as all the horrid signs and pictures they had
hung about them. No could fail to realize the
Dean Ii was better than a picture Ii was
statue in the dress of the times Its impression
was kindred to that made few years go upon
the mind of him who writes these lines when
vending his way through the streets of Dublin,
one bright May morning, and entering the dingy
walls OF Swift's own church. his eve lighted on
Roubillac's great bust of the Dean, perched I'D on
high, frowning with his heavy brow over those
marble, sightless orbs, and the fierce inscription
beneath, and close by Stela's actual grave and
opitaPus Hdu never tuOuRut OF tflese creatures
of books and traditions as realities before That
bust lives in my memory to this moment; and Mr.
Thackeray made me, and every one else who heard
him, believe in these beings of the past as if one
had personally known them No one who has
read "Henry Esmond,' could doubt bow rich
must be the writer's treasury of this sort of know
ledge; but it was proved the other evening how
charming 1t could be made even without the aid
of fiction.
'Had Mr.. Thackeray thought of 1t, he might
have given another scene which has local at
traction, besides the one in the Queens antecham-
Der. l mean where Swift, in his Journal to Stella,
describes his forcing bis way into Harleys dining
room, and finding there 'IViu. Penn, the Quaker
(our steady William and sitting down with him
and drinking good wine for twice two hours Or,
had he been disposed to wander into INA ginings,
what a theme would have been Swifts possible
career as Bishop of Virginia had the Wings Of
1907 carried out their wish of thus Transporting
him. These, however, were American applications
of his theme, which, naturally enough, did not
occur TO the lecturer"