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NEW QUARTERLY REVIEW,

AND

Digest of Current Literature,

BRITISH, AMERICAN, FRENCH, AND GERMAN.

FOR THE YEAR 1854.

VOL. III.

LONDON:

HOOKHAM AND SONS, 15, OLD BOND STREET;

A. AND W. GALIGNANI & Co., PARIS; OLIVER AND BOYD, EDINBURGH;

WILLIAM LOVE, 20, ST. ENOCH SQUARE, GLASGOW;

HODGES AND SMITH, DUBLIN; CHESSON, BOMBAY;

THACKER, SPINK & Co., CALCUTTA; PARRY & CO., MADRAS;

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LONDON:

W. M. WATTS, CROWN COURT, TEMPLE BAR.

THE

NEW QUARTERLY REVIEW.

RETROSPECT OF THE LITERATURE OF THE QUARTER.

THE third volume of the NEW QUARTERLY opens with the Retrospect of three months not rich in literature. Of history we have few achievements that may not be lightly despatched in this skimming summary. Biography offers nothing that can arrest us. Travellers never shall cease in this restless Anglo-Saxon land; but they are less rife than at other times. Even the poets are rare. If the novelists are numerous, there are scarcely any tall-headed poppies among them. The scientific works may be reckoned up with little power of numeration; and the miscellanies, although their name may be legion, offer small mark for criticism. The fact is, that it is not the season for the publication of important books. We have had foggy days in town, and wet days in the countrydays when an arm-chair and a book would seem to be the only refuge from killing ennui. But there is a fashion in this, as in other matters, and the fourth quarter of the year is not that wherein the press is especially parturient.

"Quand on n'a pas ce que l'on aime il faut aimer ce que l'on a." Sooth to say, there are, among the few books we have, some that are well worthy of attention, and which, perchance, might have been overlooked in a dense crowd. Such are they not all. Alas, that it should so be! What a happy and what a popular task would be our's, if we could pen all our criticisms upon the model of that suggested by Voltaire for Racine "Il n'y a qu'à mettre au bas de toutes les pages--beau, pathétique, har

monieux, sublime!" But we proceed to sort the little heap before us.

Sir Archibald Alison continues his History of Europe in a volume of 740 pages, which comprises the period between 1819 and 1823. This thick tome comprehends all the merits and all the demerits of its elder brother. We have the same careless condensation of annual registers, which, always excepting the carelessness, we hold to be its special merit, and to give it a certain humble household use. We have the same crazy crotchets, the same froth of whipped platitudes, the average quantity of bad Latin and bad English, and about an equal amount of bad taste. In the exercise of the secondnamed of these Alisonian habits our author has been so fortunate as to found a new city. Scipio obtained the surname of Numantinus by destroying the city of Numantia: Alison deserves greater honour, for he has produced an ancient Spanish city, whereof all classical authors have been unaccountably ignorant: it is called Numantium. The Alisonian felicity in classical allusion is now tolerably notorious. We were rather surprised lately to find what a treasury of fun this author is to the Germans: but how can it be otherwise when such passages as these are rife?" In truth, at that period it may be said that he held the keys of the cavern of Eolus in his hands, and that it rested with him to unlock the doors and let the winds sweep round the globe." Poor Eolus! Even Venus would have forgiven thee had she known that Alison

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the historian was going to convert thee into the keeper of a store-cupboard. Poor Virgil! This is the Alisonian version of those lines

-cavum conversâ cuspide montem Impulit in latus; ac venti, velut agmine facto, Quà data porta, ruunt, et terras turbine perflant. Sir Archibald is, however, of opinion that "there is a natural connection between eminence in scholarship and oratorical power," and it being one of the best-established of modern facts that Sir Archibald is no orator, perhaps we ought not to insist upon these matters. Still the historian should have some compassion for historical orators, and, if ignorant of the language they used, should get some one to translate it for him. At page 273 there is a translation of a very celebrated speech delivered by M. de Serres in the French chambers, during the debate upon the proposition (of 1819) for a general amnesty. This speech, according to Alison, concludes in these words

In the irrevocable category should be placed the family of Buonaparte, and the regicide voters. The rest are only exiled for a time. To conclude in one wordthe regicides, never!

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"Ah, Sir Alison," we think we hear the poor ghost of Serres expostulating, "Jamais does "not always mean 'never.' Although you reite"rate it a hundred times:* it may mean for "ever,' or, according to your English idiom, "for ever and a day;' an idiom, Sir Alison, "that will describe two great historians, that is "to say, yourself and Thucydides. The Athe"nian has already taken the es deí, and the rest "will exactly do for you. Sir Alison, I will "tell you one little story. The Abbé Pompignan was a very bad translator also; and "when he translated Laments of Jeremiah,

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"Madame de Stäel wrote of him

"Savez-vous pourquoi Jérémie
Se lamentait toute sa vie ?
C'est que le prophéte prévoyait

Que Pompignan le traduirait.'" We must leave the historian and the ghost of the orator to settle this matter between them, hoping, nevertheless, that the Frenchman's ghost may not be so peculiarly supernaturally gifted as that ghost spoken of in the twenty-second page of this veritable history.†

We had marked some other passages, and had intended to notice a most gross and utterly unjustifiable attack upon Miss Martineau, whose meaning he perverts, whose sentiment he mis

*Not satisfied with this most frightful display of ignorance, the author adds-" The expression used by M. de Serres, jamais (never), made an immense sensation,"

P. 273.

"It did not establish a throne surrounded by republican institutions,' but a republic surrounded by the ghost of monarchical institutions." The italics are the author's. This is showman's English.

"There you see Lord Nelson a-dying, surrounded by Captain Hardy."

represents, and whom he then plainly intimates to be, in his opinion, unworthy of her own talents or her own sex. We find, however, that the game is no longer worth running-Sir Archibald Alison has been found out.

If Sir Archibald Alison were capable of appreciating "philosophy teaching by example," we would refer him to a volume noticed in a subsequent article. A lady has displayed the industry, learning, and critical impartiality which our male historian wants. For curious research we have met with no recent work that excels this inquiry into the neglected facts anent medieval popes, emperors, kings, and crusaders.

Professor Creasy's "Account of the British Constitution" also deserves a passing word. We recommend it specially as a substitute for Delolme; but we have given an analysis of it in a separate article.

Of Mr. Beale Post, who brings us a volume of British History, we would speak with all respect. He is a man of learning and labour. He must not be put aside with a sentence like the mob of scribblers. Notwithstanding the hostile judgment of the "Révue Numismatique," and the attacks of Messrs. Evans and Ackerman, Beale Post has done much hard work; and, without at all going into the question of the Caractacus coins, we must add that he has done it well. Had he here limited himself to an illustrative volume upon the coins of Cynobelin and Caractacus, Carausius and Allectus, he had been upon his own ground, and we should have noticed his labours with unqualified pleasure. But Mr. Beale Post insists upon being an historian. Here we must decidedly protest. He has but one qualification for his assumed vocation. He has neither style nor critical judgment; nothing but mere industry. He has attempted to give the details of the whole Roman period of British history, and for this purpose he has admitted the validity of Welsh traditions, and has accepted the genuineness of apocryphal authors. Llwyarchhen, Taliessin, and Aneurin are to Mr. Beale Post fountains of pure history. This really is not to be endured. Sir Egerton Bridges, having a crotchet that he was entitled to a peerage, and finding a difficulty in convincing genealogists of his pedigree, wrote and published an exceedingly good peerage, wherein the doubted pedigree was quietly assumed as an ascertained fact. It is a trick of exactly the same class to write a history in order to give currency to doubtful coins, and to work it up with Welsh Triads. One word more, and we will remit Mr. Post to

Britannic Researches, or new facts and rectifications of Ancient British History, by Beale Post. Lond. J. R. Smith. 1853.

his numismatic labours. Of course this volume contains a great deal about Stonehenge. The theory it propounds is, that all the wonderful part of these druidical remains belongs to a time posterior to that of the Romans. We are not going to combat the paradox; but a man has a right of property even in his wildest absurdities. Mr. Post must have known, and ought to have stated, that this notable hypothesis owes its parentage, not to himself, but to Mr. Herbert, who, as we believe, first produced it in his "Cyclops Christianus."

A new library edition of Sir James Macintosh's History of England almost deserves to be considered as a new work. It was time that Macintosh should be separated from the very indifferent company wherein he was placed in the Reverend Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia; and that his history should take an individual and independent form. It is true that the work is, as the author declared in his first preface, but an abridgment, a sketch, an outline" an outline useful as an introduction, and convenient as a remembrancer;" and it is also true, that, even as an abridgment, it is very faulty. For instance, we may search in vain through those three volumes for the names of the kingdoms of the Heptarchy. Even if it were not a mere fragment-the hand of the author was arrested by death while he was tracing the history of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and marking its effect upon the atrocious doings of the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands-even if the author had lived to complete his design, this work could never have done service as an abridged history of England. The facts and dates of history are not clearly and succinctly stated; and those events which every one is expected to know are not always found in the narrative; and they are seldom brought out into their natural prominence. Still there is so much philosophy and sound constitutional information in these volumes that they deserve the careful study of every student of English history. We have always thought it a great pity that Macintosh ever undertook this book. He was not adapted to the yeoman's service of an abridgment, but he would have written a noble work had he confined himself to some division of the subject, and illustrated it with his stores of thought and indefatigable research. Upon the death of Sir James the Messrs. Longman bought up the manuscripts and memoranda left

We must, however, discharge our conscience by declaring that all the peculiar excellencies of Macintosh's work are to be enjoyed quite as thoroughly by means o the old duodecimo three-volume edition, which may be bought at any old book-stall for seven and sixpence, as they are by means of these more elegant and costly octavos.

by him, so far as they related to English history. Some of these materials have now been utilized, and Mr. Macintosh, who has dealt tenderly and piously with his father's labour, has given it a certain air of completeness by continuing it, with the aid of the collection just named, to the time of the Reformation

The "Mémoires pour servir" are not very numerous. The most important, and also the most amusing, are some letters from the poet Gray to Mason. This correspondence has long since been scanned by a biographer, and, having been bought at a public auction, is now printed, with the explanatory notes of the Reverend John Mitford. It is a pity that Mason did not give us more of them when he composed his Life of Gray. His own letters, which form by no means the least interesting portion of the volume, he of course could not have printed. We see so much here of the inner workings of the poet's mind, and so much also of the art of polishing for which Gray was so famous, and we have so affecting a picture of the loves and sorrows of poor Mason, that we must confess this volume has yielded us great pleasure, and we recommend it heartily to all who can enjoy such reading.

The "Journals and Correspondence of General Sir Harry Calvert" will be very useful and valuable to any one who may be about to write a History of the Walcheren expedition; but despite its large, loose, open type, it is rather a heavy book to get through. We much mistake the public taste if it ever become popular.

The "Memoirs of John Abernethy" are no more than the life of a surgeon, and will interest only the craft. A succession of autobiographies, like those of Moore and Haydon, has accustomed the public to expect, in a book of memoirs, journals rife with sketches of contemporarics, and correspondence interesting in anecdote. Had Abernethy kept a journal, and had Mr. Macilwain printed it, we should have found marvellous entertainment in these two volumes. The reader will, however, discover nothing here but hospital and dissecting-room talk.

Mr. Peter Burke has been detected in doing a little bit of literary patchwork. His new Life of Edmund Burke is, it seems, taken in great part, without acknowledgment from Dr. Bisset's too-well-remembered volumes. The result has been a show up, for which we are very sorry. Mr. Burke is a very hard-working booksellers' author, and-what can you expect?

The "Memoirs of Dr. Pye Smith, D.D.," who was theological professor of the old College at Homerton, is a large book with very little in it. After reading a great deal we found

"The Public and Domestic Life of Edmund Burke, Esq.," by Peter Burke, Esq. Ingram Cooke and Co.

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