New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1854-02-15
Editorial BooK-.No1,Es.

We learn that some one of that diabolical
race who have, from time immemorial, been the
scourge and the horror of men of letters-the
diabolieal race of dnns-has laid his inhuman
grippe upon the estate that Alexander Dumas
had bought and the castle he was about to
erect in this country. The consequence is that
the prince of steam-iterature has become the
lord of an imaginary domain and Of q castle in
the air, or what, in his own tongue, is geogra-
phicnlly described as chateau en- Espagne
For it seems that, when first the idea Of airy
lordships, Of fictitious sgnoriss without a
6 local habitation or . name,' entered into the
brains of French adventurers, they were ac-
eustomed to pretend that these, their imaginary
baronies, lay in Spain. Now, they are evil
IDENTIFY about to shift their fanciful possessions
from realm that has lost its reputation to an
other that can still lend one Mons Dumas,
We are warranted in surprising, has fairly 'srun
out in his own country, or he would not pre-
pose to come to this. Hence we may perceive
that our fame aboad is rising. For they who,
being bankrupt of literary character. want to
borrow, come to us. By-the-by, learning, to a
great degree, was extinguiShed in France, by
her first Revolution Her subsequent ones have
left her, for literature, only newspapers and
novels--those the most fictitious and these the
most deprayed that ever were seen But the
last Of these Revolutions has almost swept off
both: Young Napoleon has nearly rid her of
her politicians; and, to crown that benefit, has \
now only to make an end of her authors When
both are gone, she may begin afresh, at the
starting point Of some authority in government
and something sound in morals
There is an evident literary identity of thought
between the following passage in Shakspeare's
&c AS you hkeit," and one inPope Jaques says /:
Behind an oak whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that braws along this wood
10 the which place, poor sequestered stag.
ihat from the hunters aim had taien a hurt
DID come to langnsh and indeed, my lord,
mhe W,etehed animal did vent such groans
Ihas sheir discharge did stretch his eathern coat
---A Almost TO bursting and the big round tears
I.l Cours'd one another down HIS innocent nose
In piteous chase and thus the hairy fool
stood In the extreme verge of the swift brook |
Augmentipg 1t with tears.
Compare this with Pope:
NH So the struck deer, in some sequester d mart
i8F Lies down to die, the at his heart
There hid In shades and wasting day by day
lny he bleeds, and pants his life away
This is stolen: but stolen as an artist might
steal precious material-marble or gem-to
own.
While Pope has seized, and, after his artistic
manner, compressed this general Image, an
other great poet has appropriated, for the way
ward meditations of his melancholy youth in
the Elegy in a Country Ghurohyard," the
very spot-the oyerhanging tree and the muir
muring brook--by which shakspeares hurt deer
takes refuge:
There, st the foot Of yonder noddina beech
That wreafhes its old fantastic roots so biob-
His iistless length ut noontide would he stretch
And pore upon the brook that babhes by -
Finally, the whole general image of the hurt
stag, deserted by the herd, is snce more renro.
duced, BY Tom Moore, and aentimental;zed into
an amorous ditty, in which the horny and hairy
sufferer becomes both hart and husband: |
while the tree and the riyulot become his lady's |
bosom and her eyes:
Nome, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer
the nerd has fad from thee thy home is still here
.es sAii Is the smile that cloud can o'ercas
anu ee heart and the hand all thine own to the last
nut since We are talking of hurt creatures
there IS bird that has suffered in noetrv al. |
most as much as the beast sBovo con,,nen,o,o-
.eo ana as that eird IS our own national one, it
is surrey NJ mat We should lock into the man
hef in Whlch a series OF bards have let tiy at
him
OF that poor youth, Henry Kirke Wbits who
slew himself with over study, Lord Byron say.
quite pathetically
50 the struck eagle stretched upon the plain
NO more through rolling clouds TO soar again .vM
Anew his own feather on the fatal dart
And winged the shaft that pierced him to the heart
heen We're his pangs, but keener far to feel
NJ narsed the pinion that impell'd the steel
hiie the same plumage, that had warm'd his nest
prank the last life drop Of his bleeding breast
This thought is well enough amplifed; but |
that is all Who're it was gotten, one of the |
conversations in Boswell's johnson shall tell. |