Star. — 1831-05-03 (London, England)

LITERATURE.  The Megrepolitan.—COCHWlllC AND PICNZ RBOl LL. In the first number of Mr. Campbell's New Magazine, just published, and which, doubtless, will be a formidable rival to its contemporaries, we have an exquisite article on the " Literature of the Day," from which we can give at present but a brief extract—intending to recur to the other contents of the new periodical on a future occasion : . st One signal advantage which literature has gained by the modern state of things, is to be found in the downfal of authority. The hotbed growth, and rapid succession of authors, allow no time. for any one of them to be erected into an infallible standard, to which his seesaws in all future generations shall be obliged to conform. Had Meiotic written foe .filessrs. Longman, or Murray, there would have boo no danger of his philosophy ruling despotically for fourteen ittnitlYnd years; and it may be asses than doubted whether Homes himself, so circumstanced, would have set a fashion in Epics, and compelled all future spinners of Cantos to dedicate their second book, in imitation of his catalogue of ships, to an enumeration of the ' materielle' of their subsequent campaign. We, of the present day, 'come like shadows; w deli= and this bull-in-a-china-sluip sort of influence is not within our teach. There will he no more conning of Cicero, nor giving of days and nights to Addison, to form a style. Each see, liersetler, will choose its own manner of writing, as it will the esfiion of its clothes, or the cut of its political constitutions. As the monotony of Grecian atchitecture has yielded to the pleasing, thotesh capricious fancies of the emancipated Mr. Nash, so the quaket-like simplicity of Homer has given place to the arabesque originality, of cream living libenitors of the English Parnaesus. The competition which has arisen between the authors of modern times, has had the further advantage of quickening all their various movements.— Compare the cumbrous periods and floundering verbiage of the very beset writers of King James's day, with the snip-snap epigranunutic style of newspeper penny-line men.l tis the difference between a bread-wheel waggon, and a reilway steam-carriage. The sweat business of a modem nuttier is to seize his opportunity. He knows that the world t: ill neither await his leisure, nor suffer him to bestow all his tediuusness upon his readers. The age of things is arrived, and we have 110 longer time to throw away upon encase Formerly, when books were scarce, and a well-locked el:es-case contained the whole Boating eapi,el of a nation's literary amusement, a voluminous proser was a ' public benefactor • fur he hail helped to pass away the long winter's niebts, that too frequently hung heavily on hand. Burton's folio on 3lelenclioly was an inexhaustible mine of cheerfulness ; and a ponder. ous romance that took a year in; perusal, prevented more suicide than the stomach-pump. • But now, u man who is before-hand in his literature, must be a hard reader ; and a literary preset is as sedulously avoided, as a button-holding monopolist in conversation. He who does eot condense his subject within the smallest passible space, has nil more chance of the public car, than a country put, amidst the epidemic coughing of the House of Commons. " 'f bat this rapidity is generally unfuvourable to the interests of 11. terature, is an old woman's prejudice. Brevity is not only the soul of ' wit, but of clearness. That which cannot be well expressed in a few avails, rarely becomes. Hews intelligible by being wriipt up in many.— it is in vain that objection may be taken to the want of clearness in brevity, or tu the example of Tacitus, whose ohscuriry is at least as conspicuotts as his ter.-cocas. Exceptions only prove the rule; and it may be questioned whether the enigmatical puzzles of Tacitus do not reside mere in the quaintness of his conceits, and a purposed implicadun of ideas, rendered necessary by the timer in which he wrote, than in the mere sbortness of his affected sentences. How many verbose definitions are less expressive, than the simple term to be d. fined ? What speaking can be plainer, and at the 141112 C time more brief, than the energetic style of the orators of Billingsgate ? Lawyers have attempted to make things clear by tautologies and circumlocutions ; aetl' instead of arriving at the unequivocal communication of a vender of haddock and Mounding, they have deluged the world with fraud, sopliia. try, anti injustice. " We rail books now like music, at sight; and a cramped passage that rseuires study to comprehend, is a beDWOCe. of 4:mulcts:flatlet against its author. 'Whatever may be thought .f this result, its attain. went is rut to be insured without labour; and it is some proof of the merit of those authors, in whom it is most conspicuous. Questrfteite, says an Italian panto e difiteile. With eight hundred folio pates to turn in, a man must he a blunderer indeed, who cannot tell his story ;' and it may be questioned whether there is any meaning at ell in that head, which does not contrive to convey its ideas to the seeder, before he arrives at so remote a "fihis r but to condense rut entire science within too pamphlets of useful knowledge, or to bring the history of I an empire into as many volumes of a family library, requires that the subject rhuuld be well digested by the author before he puts pen to paper. If it be true that nvelern book-makers take less pains than their predecessors, it must follow that they come better prepared for their task ; and let critics say what they will of an indolent recourse to dictionaries, r.bridgments, and indexes, a man is not less meriturioue for availing himself of the improvements of his age, than he is less a traveller for having circumnavigated the world in a steam-boat." • " Tant quo nous autism dee livrea," says Mad. de Sevigne, " nous ne nuns pendrons pas."