On this page
-
Text (2)
-
iSlg ^^_ :LEA:D ^ R - rNo-352. SaTOM >at
-
CHRISTMAS READING FOR OLD AND YOUNG. We ...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
The Cambridge Essays. Camb Ridge Essays,...
he runs rapidly through Greek literature to substantiate what lias been so energetically put by Mr . Ruskin respecting the indifference of the Greeks to pictuxesqueness ; an opinion previously insisted on by Humboidt , and before Humboidt by SchiUer , whose essay Mr . Cope seems to have overlooked . Mr . Cope has no scorn in his mind in thus bringing- together the evidence : — ¦'' ;¦ ¦ . . ' : . . ¦ . ¦ . / . ¦ . . .. ; . . - . ' ¦• '¦ ¦' . . ;¦ . We in these latter days have learned to look upon the ¦ wilder sort of scenes as those in which Nature puts forth her highest powers of attraction ; we have learned to prefer the ruin to the complete building , the mountain to the fertile plain , the foaming rapid to the smooth stream , the rough , bare precipice to the level down , and to regard as the ne plus -ultra of the sublime and beautiful , the waste of desert glacier , trailed : in by its ramparts of towering rocks and peaks crowned with eternal snow , standing ; out hi dazzling whiteness against the brilliant background of the Alpine sky . Far indeed am I from asserting that such objects are not deserving of all the admiration and regard that we can bestow upon them , or that they are incapable of « xciting a genuine enthusiasm and love . I have not the smallest desire to run down
the mountains in any but the most literal sense of the words ; only if every Englishman would bear in miod how completely , in such matters , lie is the creature of education and association— --would consider what his feelings with / regard to Nature would have been , if "Wordsworth , Scott , Shelley , Keats , Tennyson , had not written— -if Turner and Stanfield had not painted , or Forbes , Agassiz , Sedgwick , and a host of naturalists carried their study of nature into the heart of her mountains—how easy it would have been for him , had he been born in the last century , to have pronounced Lincoln , or Salisbury Cathedral barbarous , or to have improved either of them by substituting a flat ceiling for its groined roof—or , if he lived in la belle France , to regard the long , sweeping , monotonous undulations , and featureless but fruitful plains of its northern and central districts , as the only true beauty in landscape—we shall , perhaps , learn to look with less scorn upon a people -who , for all that appears to the contrary , regarded a chain of mountains in no other light than as a convenient natural boundary , or a highly inconvenient obstacle to locomotion , according as their domestic or migratory propensities happened for the moment to be uppermost ; and the sea less aa a source of sublime and pleasurable emotions than as providing the readiest means for the importation of coxa and colonial produce from Egypt or the Euxine .
It is , indeed , seldom borne in mind how very much we . are influenced by the poets , how much our emotions depend on these subtle krfluences of verse and imagery , so that we cannot look upon mountains , streams , sunsets , uplands , or avenues of stately trees , without feeling something which the poets have formerly made us feel . Mr . Gope is disposed to attribute the absence ¦ of plcturesqiueness ih the Greeks to some social and ethnical conditions , " the interest of the enlightened and cultivated Greeks—poets , artists , and people—centred in man , bis nature and actions , and the loye of the picturesque was mot . " But Englishmen in the age of Pope were equally deficient in this sense of the picturesque ; and all Frenchmen , until the time of Rousseau , were dead to the influence of such poetry as external Nature inspires in Rousseau ' s descendants . A Qowper , a Rousseau , or a
Wordsworth , poets "with deep sensibilities , and having those sensibilities affected by scenery , are enough to change the whole current of a nation ' s thought ; they make all hearers share their peculiar rapture ; they teach others to see with their eyes . Had a poet of the requisite sensibility led a lonely life among the hills of Greece , he would have taught the Greeks to love those lonely Mils . We have not read Mr . Ellicott ' s essay on the " Apocryphal Gospels , " nor Mr , Waddington ' s on the ¦ " Protestant Church and Religious Liberty in France ; " but we can cordially commend Dr . Badham ' s very ingenious essay on the " Text of Shakspeare , " and Mr . Francis ' s pleasant paper on " Flyfishing . " The subject of " Coleridge , " treated by Mr . Horfc , is too great to be opened in this rapid notice , and we content ourselves with referrin «* the reader to the essay , on which he will form his own conclusions . °
Islg ^^_ :Lea:D ^ R - Rno-352. Satom >At
iSlg ^^_ : LEA : D ^ - rNo-352 . SaTOM > at
Christmas Reading For Old And Young. We ...
CHRISTMAS READING FOR OLD AND YOUNG . We group together under this seasonable title a number of books , some of which are ostensibly published for festive , fireside reading , while others we choose arbitrarily to regard in that light , on account of their seeming to us peculiarly adapted to the time of year . First on the list we place a new story by the Author " The Falcon Family , " " The Bachelor of the Albany , " & c , entitled Clover Cottage ; or , I Can't Get In : a Nomllette ( Chapman and Hall ) . This is a little foolscap octavo volume , with illustrations by M'Connell , setting forth a narrative of an elderly bachelor ( Mr . Windfall ) and a charming young widow ( Mrs . Wily ) , who are at odds about the possession of Clover Cottage , a
transporting little paradise in Hampshire , owned by the gentleman but occupied by the lady . Mr . Windfall has invited a party of sporting friends to go down with him in September to the disputed Eden , and have a few days' shooting ; but June has arrived , and the widow shows no sign of leaving , and Mr . Windfall is unmercifull y joked by his friends , who begin to suspect that the cottage and grounds exist simply in his own imagination . How he appeals to lawyers in vain ; how at length he goes down in the autumn to the spot itself , in company with his sporting friends ; how they invade the widow ' s house just at the dinner hour , and are righ £ cordially received ; and how , finally , Mr . Windfall obtains possession , not only of the cottage , but of tbe fascinating widow also , the reader must find out for himself . The tale is pleasantly and amusingly told , though the dialogue is ' a little too much like that which we find in farces , and the characterization is somewhat
conveational . The stage effect seems , indeed , to have been designed by the author ; for he prefixes a list of dramatis per & oncc . Zetland Pencil JPicfares , by Tuomaa Hood ( Hurst and Blackett ) , is atitle which makes ua fancy that we have floated buck some twelve years or so , and that we have before us a new work by one of the brightest and most vaxioua-bued wits and poets whom the present century has produced—that W ^ if , ? ? ° P *^ l ? K ° " some now " Haunted House" and " Bridge of ° l £ **> mtecaperaed with the quaintest of conceits and the most preposterous of puna . Such , however , is not the case ; but the book , nevertheless , is worth lookwg into . When Thomas Hood died , ho left behind him a collection of works which will not die , and a son who bears his father ' s name , and exhibits something of Ins father ' s faculty . The volume boforo us w a collection of the literary productions , in prose and vorse . of the younger 1 1 1 ¦ ¦ 3 3 c
• ronVjI ? >\ for tllus I * -signs Wself in his dedication , thou-hWe tinnT it would have been as well not to adopt that distinctive cognomen eSDe ciaily as lie does not give any intimation of his being the son ? and norE fatber—a mistake which the reader might at first sight make , tliereS such things as posthumous works . Mr . Hood appears to have afwlik rSJ but we should judge tliat he is still very young—at least , we hope so for hi has much to learn . He gives one the impression of a gentleman , fresh W college , mistaking his own new perceptions and experiences for tilings wl' 1 are new to others , and rather proud of his Latin and of Iris ability to mi ok from Horace in Horace ' s native tongue . We are inclined , also to obWf + ° his sentimentalising ; but , when he writes in a more genial and naturusfr- " we see some sparkles of the father ' s wit . More especially have wo ' ^ v " ) the essay called ^ « A Wreath of Smoke : a Rhapsodical Reverie overTi -Nightly Pipe , ' Ex Fumo dare Lucem' "—in which the luxuriant dreamv fancies of the smoker float airily before our eyes , with all the volatile <* rac £ and shifting outlines of the fumes ' that ' curl-upwards from the hookah Verv admirable , too , is the subjoined little poem , which is full of sly yet iovial humour , of easy , impulsive verse and unwonted rhymes : — ' OCHE FOIIK SEiVSOSS . —A MADKIGAL . " King a ding a ding ! In the early Spring Wooed I the old woman , Wooed and wed her too , uian ! . : She was rich and old , ? And , if truth lie told , I did wed her gold ! Well—and would not you , man ? King a ding a ding . How the bells did ring When I wed in Spring ! In the summerdays , With the sua a-blaze—Sickened the old woman ; As old women do , man ! Spite of draught and pill Grew she very ill . Sick and " sicker" still All the time she grew , man ! : In tlie summer days , With the sky a-blaze , I She got worse always ! Ding a donga dong ! . Autumn came ere long ! Died the poor old woman ! Well- —what could I do , man ? Why , I put on black , And , as tears did lack , In a cup of sack Wetted mine eyes two , man ! Ding a dong a dong , With a funeral song Autumn came ere long ! King a ding a ding ! Let us quaff iand sing ! So died the old woman ! And for nie and you , man , , Left her wealth untold ; And this vintage old Of her guineas gold . Cost me not a few , man ! Well , she died iu time ! For by Christmas chime , Ring a ding a ding , We can drink and sing—We good fellows two , man ! King a ding a ding , Let the joy-belle ring ! An idle hour may be pleasantly whiled away by several of Mr . Ilood ' a sketches , which , we should add , are here and there illustrated by grotesque woodcuts , some of them marvellously like tbe father ' s pictorial drolleries , though for the most part they exhibit move executive mastery . Here is a shilling volume which , though it be merely a parody , exhibits real genius and original power . The Sony of Drop Wather ^ a London legend , by Harry Wandsworth Shortfellow ( llo ' utledge ) , is , as the reader will see by the title , a travestie of Longfellow ' s " Hiawatha , " wonderfully it miinicks the characteristics of that fine American poem . But this is not done irreverently ; for Mr . u Shovtfellow" expresses his real admiration for the lied Indian epic , and says he merely seeks to put forth a " sportive ttillo . " Drop o' Wather is a London thief , born in the kennels of St . Giles ' Irish parents , and retaining something of their peculiar notions of the English language , while he is ' up' to all the dodges' and slang of the city of his birth . The knavish adventures of this worthy , from his childhood down to his self-decreed reformation and departure for Australia , ave told in the singular versification of the original , and with an amount of humour , of rollicking fun , tuw even of occasional tragic power and a sort of vagabond poetry , indicative ot no common hand . The knowledge of London life in its squalid undcriinmal aspects is remarkable . The dim alleys and thieves' dons , the dirt mid slime , the grotesque merriment and foul picturesqueness , of Sevoa Dials rise before us in this London Legend . The author has the happy art of toiK'Uing pitch without dealing himself . Ho is a master of slang , and usoti it with the most artistic effect ; but he does not disgust the reader , lie awakens our syiupatUies for a strange development of humanity lying all round us , yet cut off * by a great gulf—not a morbid sympathy with crime , but a humanizing regard for our outcast brethren . Hece is his description of the birth oi his hero : — Downward through the darkening twilight , , In the days long time ago , now , In tho last of drunken stages .
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 20, 1856, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_20121856/page/18/
-