The Sun. — 1846-01-03 (London, England)

AND—MODERN INSTANCES. proved - 2 Vols. By Thomas Cooper. 11:1'tisgiatory of these two little volumes has already.. ted himself to be a poet of no ordinary capacities, Par be Publication of a prison rhyme, entitled "The Suicides ;" he now, however, advances Sooleaai,,ro to consideration as a writer of prose fictions. liter:,Ut the most admirable productions in our native to ti;e'llre have been germinated amidst scenes which ungeni,ll,4hilosophical mind were apparently of an disionagt` or dispiriting character, and men have occaci ailed into being works breathing purity an `ll every line, while they themselves have been Th riu,ed by debasing and degrading influence. his his dungeon, did the Earl of Surrey permit tem arnation to wanton in an idealizing and unfethis d ibertY ; thus Burns, at the ploughshare, wove 4,01;1Y-dreams into verse, and wrought himself .a loner:f-Place for ever in futurity; thus, when a prirenees"c! Sir Walter Raleigh chronicle the occurinsa °Ygone times • and thus, in a thousand other • anoe, of ' has the human intellect risen above the force ever onmstances scatheless and uncramped. Whatit be ZaY be the predominating bias of a man, whether means r action or for thought, that bias will ever find a hecnitable. Lei ionroonf.aturoem, plishing its purpose; once implanted it can never lie dormant, its course that The bias of Thomas Cooper is— selfy, a in{!tiSt Write ; it appears to be his " other kind imperative of second nature ; its commands are b ive to him, and these commands could not b;sga,!nsayed even by the walls of Stafford gaol:during r Confinement for conspiracy." In issuing his gatory of Suicides" to the world, he acted well, ,It bears the impress of a generous heart and a „u Pious fancy ; in publishing his present work, all deference Saws and Modern Instances," we think with `"'t deference to himself, that he has acted somewhat rashly and unwisely. Nature has gifted him, that abundantly, with all the exigencies and qu a poet, 'alifieations of but in aiming at another sphere in liter, ha attire, as in the present instance, we conceive hbas outstepped th dictates of prudence. That he ‘,;:,..8; an observant eye, and no mean perception of the „0 ey: 11 phases of character in his fellow man, is for need by several passages in the volumes before us , i! example, in the rapers headed " Raven Dick, the nuLther Intellect; or, Who Scratched the Bull," an The ival Lever that lacked a Fulcrum ;" but that thesPossessss the capability of adequately pourtraying front Phases of society is not at all to be deduced the Qtheir pages. In speaking of Charles Dickens, retomrrateHY Review, some years back, very justly vulgar e' that his delineations of low life are never troom grape are, on the contrary, fraught with (allot bea and elegance; this praise, however, can daises, as to the delineations of the humbler twentv 7 iven by Mr. Cooper in these three-andineti'r °gelle& They retain throughout an overcl ;teattle of the subject which is being described; they themMselves in a palpable lowliness of metaphor, 1-erY Riallnge poverty of language. Besides these runeir,d'lng defects on the part of our author, he his exeusabi another of a fir more incorrigible and intio e nat in . us afire :attempting to endue his descripPreface tnat air of " naturalness" to which in his atd sia,‘" ostensibly aspires, all the common-places nrieducug Phrases in vogue now-a-days among the seriten ated are interlarded with almost every other few inestea'ne9f. this intolerable blemish we will give a h e„,:s -a-,"„PanY was large, well-dressed, and from the "Jaeteaus nvi''arauce of the numerous leather port``A eh, B,e. wa' too ange of neat suit- was purchased (for the lad habit, whBQicalisile to be fooled into- the kichshaw dandy "Co the Cockney recommended"), &c. rile • al inn lnttlerciai gentlemen, even at the first-rate comb 1` Ur, mot don cut it quite so fat," &c. comber 0 tinier was completely flummoxed and fiab_ ()1 a hea,,, r, RS Jonathan would say, he was struck all In tea, t &e. anti &tile' 117 , the man he could plainly see was up to &to ada isy ! rattled the young ladies thumped and Thes &c. Bele e are but eLted at rand a few of the obnoxious vulgarisms, ,„/vo"rn that it _ °En, and constitute a blemish in the %Not, of , _rottld require a very considerable prose ions uties to obliterate. In all future proCh rrie,:v‘e w°llld recommend Mr. Cooper to avoid thing ness ~ • etrioio.._ us and • mistaken efforts at " naturallte,!ing that they more particularly, than anyPoetii:-'l;,',,re,nder his present work a failure. As a sterl's of hi - sire . readrs, y excited the admiration and regard 418. el..,_lsout he has not as yet advanced any "'n to Popularity as a prose writer.  metre' larg-' '3 NEAR Losino—x.--During the lag fortnight a.ember of snipes have visited the outskirts of the stye liplis which circumstance indicates approaching fros : vir .._l7, rthou i2l,l.?_f_these birds have been shot in Battersea-fields and -common. ver;lBA nal zEL Con, D ' N