The Sun. — 1846-01-05 (London, England)

WISE SAWS AND MODERN IZS'STANCES. 2 Vols. By Thomas Cooper. The author of these two little volumes has already proved himself to be a poet of no ordinary capacities, by the publication of a prison rhyme, entitled "The Purgatory of Suicides ;" he now, however, advances his claim to consideration as a writer of prose fictions. Some of the most admirable productions in our native literature have been germinated amidst scenes which to the unphilosophical mind were apparently of an ungenial or dispiriting character, and men have occasionally called into being works breathing purity and dignity in every line, while they themselves have been encompassed by debasing and degrading influences Thus, in his dungeon, did the Earl of Surrey permit his imagination to wanton in an idealizing and unfettered liberty ; thus Burns, at the ploughshare, wove his day-dre ams into verse, and wrought himself a dwelling-place for ever in futurity ; thus, when a prisoner, did Sir Walter Raleigh chronicle the occurrences of bygone times; and thus, in a thousand other instances, has the human intellect risen above the force of circumstances scatheless and uncramped. Whatever may be the predominating bias of a man, whether it be for action or for thought, that bias will ever find a means of accomplishing its purpose; once implanted in our nature, it can never lie dormant, its course is indomitable. The bias of Thomas Cooper is— that he must write; it appears to be his " other self," a kind of second nature; its commands are imperative to him, and these commands could not be gainsa:, ed even by the walls of Stafford gaol during his " confinement for conspiracy." In issuing his " Purgatory of Suicides" to the world, be acted well, for it bears the impress of a generous heart and a copious fancy ; in publishing his present work, " Wise Saws and Modern Instances," we think with all deference to himself, that he has acted somewhat rashly and unwisely. Nature has gifted him, and that abundantly, with all the exigencies and qualifications of a poet, hut in aiming at another sphere in literature, as in the present instance, we conceive he has outstepped the dictates of prudence. That he has an observant eye, and no mean perception of the various phases of character in his fellow man, is evinced by several passages in the volumes before us; for example, in the papers headed " Raven Dick, the Poa :her; or, Who Scratched the Bull," and "The Intellectual Lever that lacked a Fulcrum ;" but that he possesses the capability of adequately pourtraying these phases of society is not at all to be deduced from their pages. In speaking of Charles Dickens, the Quarterly Review, some years back, very justly remarked that his delineations of low life are never vulgar, but are, on the contrary, fraught with extreme grace and elegance; this praise, however, can not be awarded to the delineations of the humbler classes, as given by Mr. Cooper in these three-andtwenty sketches. They retain throughout an overtincture of the subject which is being described; they clothe themselves in a palpable lowliness of metaphor, and a strange poverty of language. Besides these very glaring defects on the part of our author, he hss acquired another of a far more incorrigible and inexcusable nature : in attempting to endue his descriptions with that air of " naturalness" to which in his preface he ostensibly aspires, all the common-places and slang phrases in vogue now-a-days among the uneducated are interlarded with almost every other sentence. Of this intolerable blemish we will give a few instances : " The company was large, well-dressed, and from the bang-up appearance of the numerous leather portmanteaus," &c. " A change of neat suits was purchased (for the lad was too sensible to be fooled into the hichshaw dandy habits which the Cockney recommended"), &e, " Commercial gentlem. n, even at the first-rate cora. mercial inns, don't cut it quite so fat," &c. Mr. Mortimer was completely flummuxed and flabbeigasted ; or, as Jonathan would say, he was stuck al of a heap," &c. " li, tact, the man he could plainly see was up to snuff," &c. " But, lackadaisy I the young ladies thumped and rattled till Dig," &c. These are but a few of the obnoxious vulgarisms, selected at random, and constitute a blemish in the work that it would require a very considerable proportion of beauties to obliterate, In all future productions we would rec“mittend Mr. Cooper to avoid such meretricious and mistaken efforts at " naturalness," seeing that they more partn•ularly, than anything else, render his present work a failure. As a poet he has already excited the admiration and regard of his readers, but he has not as yet advanced any sterling claims to popularity as a prose writer.  a large number of snipes visited the outskirts of the