Chapter 7

“An old crow sitting on a hickory limb,Who winked at me, and I winked at him.”

“An old crow sitting on a hickory limb,

Who winked at me, and I winked at him.”

The simple truth is, that Mr. Downing never committed a greater mistake in his life than when he fancied himself a poet, even in the ninty-ninth degree. We doubt whether he could distinctly state the difference between an epic and an epigram. And it will not do for him to appeal from the critic tocommonreaders—because we assure him his book is a veryuncommon book. We never saw any one so uncommonly bad—nor one about whose parturition so uncommon a fuss has been made, so little to the satisfaction of common sense. Your poem is a curiosity, Mr. Jack Downing; your “Metrical Romance” is not worth a single half sheet of the paste-board upon which it is printed. This is our humble and honest opinion; and, although honest opinions are not very plentiful just now, you can have ours at what it is worth. But we wish, before parting, to ask you one question. Whatdoyou mean by that motto from sir Philip Sidney, upon the title-page? “He cometh to you with a tale that holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner.” What do you mean by it, we say. Either you cannot intend to apply it to the “tale” of Powhatan, or else all the “old men” in your particular neighbourhood must beveryold men; and all the “little children” a set of dunder-headed little ignoramuses.

Miscellanies of Literature. By the Author of Curiosities of Literature. 3 vols. J. & H. Langley, New York: 1841.

These volumes remind us of Coke upon Lyttleton, with which whilom we were wont to be delighted; for they are full of the same odd conceits, and present the same crude mass of undigested learning. Facts which no one else would ever have hunted up from the shelves of dusty libraries; theories which hitherto no man thought of substantiating by a reference to biography or history; ideas, which are oddities in themselves, and which are presented in the quaintest style; and illustrations of notions that no one else would ever have thought of, or which, if thought of, would not have been dressed up in so outlandish a manner, are all marshalled together here in disorderly array, pushing, jostling, and crowding each other until they remind one of Falstaff’s valorous regiment, or a militia training in a midland county.

Seriously, however, these miscellanies embody a vast amount of out-of-the-way intelligence, interesting to the general, but absolutely necessary to the literary reader. No man but D’Israeli would ever have had the patience to compile such a work. His ideas on the literary character; his observations on men of genius; and his sketch of King James the first, embody a vast body of undigested facts that must have consumed years merely in their collection. Industry, however, is the only merit of these volumes: in arranging this vast mass of truths, D’Israeli has shown anything but a comprehensive mind.

The work is got up in fine style, as what work is not, when issued by the Langleys?

Carleton, A Tale of Seventeen Hundred and Seventy-Six. Two volumes. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard.

We have heard this novel attributed to a gentleman of Philadelphia, and also to a citizen of New York. The question appears to be a moot one still, but, like many other moot points, is one of amazingly little importance. The book seems to be the composition of a young man, well educated in consonance with some of those Pharisaical literary creeds which are all-potent in deadening the higher powers in favor of the common-place. He has been taughtproprietyas the chief of the cardinal virtues, and instructed to regardoriginalityas the sum total of the cardinal sins. His peculiar intellect, at the same time, has been a soil precisely adapted for the seed sown. In regard to “Carleton,” we may say in its behalf that its style is strikinglycorrect, and that its incidents and its reflections never, even by accident, startle us into unpleasant excitement. With this peace-offering upon the shrine of thedecorous, we now take the liberty of throwing the book out of the window.

Lives of the Queens of England, from the Norman Conquest; With Anecdotes of their Courts; Now first Published from Official Records and Other Authentic Documents, Private as well as Public. From the Second London Edition, with Corrections and Additions. ByAgnes Strickland.Vols. 1 and 2. Lea & Blanchard. Philadelphia.

This book has been well received in England, and justly so. Its design is obviously good, and its execution does honor to the fair author—for in this instance it is scarcely right to call her a compiler. The work is quite as original as any similar work can be. The task of composing it has been an arduous one indeed; and there are few women who could have accomplished it, as we see it accomplished. The ground upon which Mrs. Strickland has so boldly yet judiciously ventured is one hitherto unbroken, and, although she has trodden among flowers, she has not escaped the delving drudgery of the pioneer. In short, a deep research has been demanded for this labor, in quarters far out of the reach of the ordinary investigator.

The title, although comprehensive, does not fully indicate the book. We have not only the Lives of the Queens from the Norman Conquest, but, in the Introduction, notices of the ancient British and Saxon ones. The Empress Matilda is included among the former; although she has never been so ranked by any previous historian. In this our author is fully justified, however; for Matilda, who herself claimed no title beyond that of “Domina of England,” was queende jure, and, in a historical view, a monarch of high importance, as the mother of the Plantagenets, and the uniting link of the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman dynasties. The materials of which her memoir is composed are derived chiefly from Norman and Latin chronicles, never before translated.

These volumes are sufficiently well done in a mechanical point of view. The lithograph portrait of Matilda, however, is greasy and ineffective, and typographical blunders obscure the meaning of many important passages. In the very first paragraph of the Introduction, for instance, we have Solentfæminrumductu bellare; a sentence which we are quite sure was never put together by Tacitus, from whose Life of Agricola it is taken.

The book, upon the whole, is one of rich interest and value, and must find a place in every historical library.

The History of a Flirt. 2 vols. Lea & Blanchard, Philadelphia: 1841.

This novel displays considerable ability, wasted on very common-place incidents. If the author will undertake a subject worthy of her talents—are we wrong in fancying the writer a lady?—we may yet hail her as a novelist of no slight pretensions.

Outlines of Geography and History, presenting a Concise View of the World. ByFrederick Emerson,author of the North American Arithmetic. Hogan & Thompson: Philadelphia.

The Preface of this little work greatly interested us in its favor, and a careful examination of its contents did not lessen the interest. In its arrangement, Geography and History are combined—the former being the leading topic, and the latter the concomitant. The author’s observations, in respect to this junction, are just. The two subjects are so intimately connected in their own nature, that, however they may be separated in books, they can never be disconnected in the mind. The simultaneous study of both, properly connected, secures the learner from imbibing false notions of either.

The book is concise, but accurate, and well adapted either for a prefatory text-book, or for those whose limited school-time will not allow them to go through with a more diffuse system. It is very neatly and substantially gotten up.

The Works of Lord Bolingbroke, with a Life, prepared expressly for this Edition, containing additional information relative to his Personal and Private Character: 4 vols. Carey and Hart: Philadelphia. 1841.

An American edition of the works of Lord Bolingbroke has long been adesideratumto the scholar, and it is with no little pride we record that to Philadelphia we are indebted for so elegant an edition of them, as now lies before us. The typography of these volumes would do credit to the famous London press. With the exception of a few costly works published from time to time in our country, this edition of Lord Bolingbroke is unrivalled as a work of art.

The volumes before us contain the various political and philosophical writings of Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke. Of these, the political tracts are the most valuable: in a measure, for their matter, but chiefly for their style. Among these, the “Dissertation on Parties,” the “Letter to Sir Wm. Wyndham,” the “Idea of a Patriot King,” and the letters “on the study of History,” are the most celebrated. The philosophical essays, occupying two of the volumes on our table, are comparatively valueless, and inferior, both in style and matter, to the political tracts. They are deeply imbued with the sceptical opinions of the author, and we should have willingly seen them omitted in this edition, if it were possible to get up a complete one, with nearly one half of the author’s works left out. Little, therefore, as we value the philosophical works of Bolingbroke, we commend the publishers for not expunging them as too many others would have done.

The style of Bolingbroke is unrivalled. No library is perfect without his works, and they should be studied by the public speaker, or the author, night and day. We boldly aver that there does not exist a writer in the language, the reading of whose works, so far as diction is concerned, would be more beneficial to young men. Bolingbroke’s choice of words is singularly fine. Nothing can be clearer, stronger, or more copious than his language. Terse, nervous, epigrammatic; diffuse in general, but condensed when necessary; at times racy, at times vehement, at times compact as iron; rhetorical, yet easy; elegant, yet convincing; bold, rapid and declamatory, his writings carry one away like a spoken harangue, without betraying the carelessness of the extemporaneous style. The very absence of method, which, in others, would be faulty, is, in Bolingbroke, from the air of frankness it gives to his cause, and its consistency with his essentially oratorical style, a merit: at least not a defect. In grace he has no equal. The euphony of his sentences is like the liquid flow of a river. No writer in the English tongue so much resembles Cicero—to our mind—as Bolingbroke. Burke has been called his rival here; but Burke wanted the ease, the elegance, the chastened imagery of Tully, and in all of these St. John rivalled the friend of Atticus. Deeply imbued with the Latin literature, Bolingbroke has caught, as it were, the spirit of the Augustan age; and we feel, in perusing his pages, the same chastened delight which we enjoy over no modern, and only over Tully among the ancients.

We repeat it: no library is complete without these volumes. Hitherto, the difficulty of obtaining a set of Bolingbroke’s Works, and the high price at which the English editions were sold, have confined the study of his writings comparatively to a few.

The life of Bolingbroke, affixed to these volumes, is altogether a mongrel affair, being made up of shreds and patches, like an old grandam’s best bed-quilt. The text is Goldsmith, interpolated with Brougham, Cooke, and the Encyclopædia. It is true, the preface states this at large, but it also conveys the impression that the memoir has been re-written, and that only thematerialshave been used. Now, if so, a more unequal, ragged, piebald piece of composition was never perpetrated than this same memoir, and the author—if any one but a pair of scissors there be—ought to be condemned to the now obsolete, but not less effective punishment, of the cutty-stool. If ever a man deserved a horse-pond, it is the inditer of this biography.

A Memoir of the Very Reverend Theobald Mathew. With an Account of the Rise and Progress of Temperance in Ireland. By the Reverend James Bermingham, of Borisokane. Edited byP. H. Morris, M. D.,and by whom is added the Evil Effects of Drunkenness Physiologically Explained. Alexander V. Blake: New York.

It is scarcely too much to say that the Temperance Reformation is the most important which the world ever knew. Yet itsgreatfeature has never yet been made a subject of comment. We mean that of adding to man’s happiness (the ultimate object ofallreform), not by the difficult and equivocal process of multiplying his pleasures, in their external regard, but by the simple and most effectual one of exalting his capacity for enjoyment. The temperate man carries within his own bosom, under all circumstances, the true, the only elements of bliss.

The book before us will essentially aid the good cause. The memoir of Mathew is deeply interesting; but, excellent as it is, we prefer the essay of Dr. Morris on “the Effects of Drunkenness Physiologically considered.” Through the influence of the physical, rather than of the moral suggestions against alcohol, the permanency of the temperance reform will be made good. Convince the world that spirituous liquors are poison to the body, and it will be scarcely necessary to add that they are ruin to the soul.

The Life and Land of Burns: 1 vol. J. & H. Langley: New York. 1841.

This is an excellent work, got up in a style of exceeding beauty. The Langleys, indeed, are becoming celebrated for the beauty of their publications.

An essay by Carlyle, written in his usual barbarous style, but sparkling with brilliant thoughts, like diamonds in a mine, forms one of the chief features of the contents.

Transcriber’s Notes:

Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience. Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious punctuation and typesetting errors have been corrected without note. A cover has been created for this ebook and is placed in the public domain.

In E.A. Poe’s article A FEW WORDS ON SECRET WRITING, a page image of a cryptograph has been used for the ebook formats other than plain text, rather than a transcription, due to limitations of modern fonts and devices. It is interesting to use that illustration image as indicator of the problems which could occur with old physical typesetting methods. Looking at the image ofthe cryptographwe can see the first 6 characters of the first line are $0.£][ which according to the list of characters above the cryptograph would be "wm eust" but were meant to represent the words "we must". Unfortunately the typesetter made an error and transposed the e (.) and m (0) so the first characters should have been printed as $.0£][ to be a correct representation of the paragraph.

[End of Graham’s Magazine, Vol. XIX, No. 1, July 1841, George R. Graham, Editor]

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