New-York tribune., 1881-09-02
LITERATURE IN LONDON.

SOME QUEER ENGIIsH-A NEW VOLUME BY PRO-
FEssOR HUXLtY.
frRoM THE REGULAR CORRESPONDENT on THE TRIBUNE.l
LONDON, Aug. 10.-The anonymous compiler of
"The Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of
Beaconsfeld y is Mr. Henry G. Caleraft. Why he has
chosen not TO put his to the book can't say.
As he has made the secret an open one and half Lon
don has heard that the book is his, there can be
harm in saying so. Mr. CalcrafJ is known by every
body who is anybody, and his doings are known.
He used to be private secretary to Mr.. Bright and
from that post, which should fancy must have
been more or less of "a sinecure was promoted to be
Permanent Secretary to the Board of Trade
In thlt capacity he has beeu for
some years of that body of irremovable
clerks who govern this country with despotism all
the arbitrary because it is secret and they are
irresponsible.
Mr.. Cacratt's celebrity, however depends neither
on his former relation 10 Mr.. Bright nor on his
present autoeraey. His position in the world of
London is distinctly social: the position of man
who knows everybody, goes everywhere and is uni
yersally liked. It is sometime since he conceived
the notion of getting together a book of extracts
from Lord Beaeonsheld's writings and speeches.
which needs to be said in order to anticipate the
notion otherwise natural enough, that this antho-
ogy has been hUrely collected since Lord Beacons-
fields death, or that it is publishers
enterprise So far Is it from being the LATTER that
Messrs. Longman for a while stood between Mr.
Calcraft and the public. When he told them what
sort OF work he had been busy with, they claimed
copyright in the greater part of the extracts Mr.
Caleraft in the end found himself obliged to aban-
don his book to dispose of it to Messrs Longman
at nominal prlce, OF almost nominal They would
neither allow him to sell it to another firm nor pay
him what another firm would have paid for it,
This don't say Mr.. Caleraft'S authority, | only
repeat what have been told. If not true it is at any
rate characteristics. On such matters and many
other matters publishers have code OF their own
and the common standards of morality OF fairness
not to- be applied to them in their dealings with
authors.
Mr.. Calcraft tells us in his preface that his task
performed with the knowledge AID approval of
Lord B, aconsfed. SO it ought to have besn if the
book were to have been published during the late
Earls life But il this implies that Lord Beaeons-
field had anything to do with selecting the extracts
it explains one of the marked faults OF the book.
good many OF the extracts were, to speak plainly
not worth making. With all his acuteness of mind
Lord Bcaconsiied siDguiarly deficient in the
critical faculty, sngulary lax in applying il to
his own writings. He is one of the most unequal of
authors. His books abound in passages of writing
of the most slovenly kind, sloyenly both in
thought and IN style, and not iDfrcqently in
grammatical structure. His taste in some matters
vicious. He delighted in false ornament His
love for tinse and trinkets oriental not to say
barbar0us, for at times it had more in common with
the South Sea Islander than with the dweller in
Mesopotamia or Persia. If he favored Mr.. Calcraft
with his cooperation it is to Lord Beaconsield one
may venture to say, and to his editor that the
choice of some of the most extraordinary of these
specimens must be imputed. 1t is useless TO par
ticularize them. Every reader will recognize them
as the most pretentious and the most tawry in the
book. IL they were cut out unsparlngly the volume
would be better for every eXcision Even as it is,
however. 1T is monument to Lord Beaconsfeld's
versatile and INSCRIPTIONS genius and likely to be
turned TO when his most elaborate novels and most
famous speeches have ceased TO attract any but stu
dents of the period in winch he hourished great
writer does not gain but loses when read in bits
His best and most epigrammatic sentences better
with the context than without. But Lord Beacons-
field gains. His gems better without the setting
which too often obscured instead of enhancing their
brilliancy. His pages are like the dwelling of one
of those great Asian princes whom he admired and
whom next to the Jews he regarded as the real aris-
tocracy of the world Gold and precious stones and
gorgeous fabrics scattered about in the midst of
dirt and refuse. AS the house could not be purified
without pulling it down, Mr.. Calcraft has done
wisely and well in picking out its treasures and set
ting them apart where they can be judged on their
own merits.
Among the American successes of the English sea-
must be reckoned Mr.. Harris's " Uncle Remusn;
oil which a London edition has been issued with the
imprint of David Bogue who has also the honor of
beng Mr. Oscar Wilde's publisher Whether I'm
Gle Remus" be success in the commercial or
popular sense, don't know. But il has been read
with something like enthusiasm by people not given
to enthusiasm To mention but one instance, ii so
delighted one of the most cultivated and brilliant
women of fEngland-belongiDg, alas ! to past gem
eration-that she had turned the last page
than she hurried the book off by express to Mr.
Tennyson, to whom it may possibly supply enough
material for fresher than he has lately chosen
to give By younger critics, and they are none
the less critics because they young the book is
praised with discriminating heartiness. Not the
very youngest of these has been taken in by Mr..
Harris's s. serious intention" His work has not
converted the most inexperienced or the most luke
warm Abolitionst into partisan apoogist of the
peculiar institution. But English and Americans
and Anglo-Americans have all tribute
to offer to Mr.. HarTis's true and delicate
sense OF hum0r, to his literary sk an to his deep
sympathy with of the better traits of the
negro character. The words literary skill, as ap-
piled to Mr. Harris, ought not TO be used without
qualification. He has the skill which goes with ino
natural gifts. In the skill which comes from cul-
ture and an exact knowledge of words and forms of
speech, he is deficient. One hardly knows which
one likes least-to find American author present
ing to an English audience an old negro who has
nothing but pleasant memories of the discipline of
slavery to find him remarking that il would be
presumptive' in him to offer an opinion. Ii is
open to Mr. Harris to say that there is authority for
that use OF the word, but most readers will suppose
and, fear, rightly suppose that Mr. Harris had in
his mind, not the usage of Elizabethan authors but
the usage of the balf-educated Southerners whose
patrarchial notions of slavery he would like to re-
establish.