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««^« 23 »^^ ^™ do not
Th * be are people whose delight is to « draw a moral , " especially when that moral is offensive to the person addressed . These people will be gratified to learn that a cadet of Lord Abebz > £ -5 n ' s family planned and conducted the policy of the Russian Government towards Turkey which , after two centuries of aggression , brought the Western troops into Sebastopol . This cadet was General Patbick Gobdon , the friend and adviser of Peteb the Gbeat , and the conqueror of Azof . To him and his doings the Edinburgh Review devotes an interesting article , which will be generally read now that Russian history has become interesting to us . Another article , also of a
biographicalhistorical nature , is that on " Cavallier and the Camisards , " a good narrative of the part played by Jean Cavaixieb in the dreadful episode of the Cevennes massacres . Samuel Rogers and Heine are taken as topics for two articles , one very ambitious in scope , but poorly written , and overweighted with old jokes and old similies ; the other , altogether higher in style , is unhappily little more than a few lazy remarks , serving to introduce some admirable translations . One feels that the author could have written worthily about Heine , had he taken the pains . He strikes the key-note , when , speaking of the misunderstanding which uniformly awaits the
humourist , he say 8 : — There is no need of supposing any determined hostility , or the existence of either envy or malignity , in the repulsion with which ordinary minds shrink from the humouristic character . If to studious men it seems shallow , if to severe men it seems indifferent , if to pious men it seems irreverent , these are the inevitable consequences of their mental vision being brought to bear on objects it is not fitted to contemplate . The contrasts , the inconsistencies , the incongruities , which provoke and exercise the faculty of humour , are really invisible to most persons , or , when perceived , arouse a totally distinct order of ideas and associations . It must seem to them at best a mischievous inclination to find a source of mirth in the sufferings , and struggles , and troubles of others ; and when the humourist extends this practice to himself , and discovers a certain satisfaction in his own weaknesses and miseries , introverting the very sensations of pleasure and pain , he not only checks the sympathy he might otherwise have won , but his very courage is interpreted into an unnatural audacity , alike defiant of the will of Heaven and of the aid of man . The deep consolations of this faculty in the trials and extremities of life are altogether unknown to them .
We are tempted to give two of the poems translated in this article , in which Heine , singing in the character of Lazarus , thus grimly humorous pours forth bis complaints : — My one love is the Dark Ladie ; O she has loved me long and well : Her tears , when last she wept o ' er me , Turned my hair grey , where ' er they fell . She kissed my eyes , and all was black , Embraced my kneed , and both were lame , Clung to my neck , and from my back The marrow to her kisses came . My body is a carcass , where The spirit suffers prison-bound : Sometimes it tosses in despair , And rages like a crazy hound . Unmeaning curses ! oath on oath Cannot destroy a single fly : Bear what God sends you—nothing loth To pray for better by-and-by . 2 . Old Time is lame and halt , The snail can barely crawl : But how should I find fault , Who cannot move at all ? No gleam of cheerful sun I No hope my life to save ! I have two rooms—the one I die in and the grave . Maybe I ' ve long been dead , Maybe a giddy train Of phantoms fills my head , And haunts what was my brain . These dear old gods or devils , Who sec me stiff and dull , May like to dance their revela In a dead Poet ' s skull . Their rage of weird delight Is luscious pain to me : And my bony fingers write What daylight must not see . The London Quarterly ia a very creditable organ of the Weuleyan party , which the generul reader may always take up with pleasure and profit , never suspecting Methodism unless he happen to read the theological articles . In the present number thoro are two admirable papers , of practical interest , very graphically "written—one on " British and French Agriculture , " one on the " Cornish Miners . " Thoro is also a good paper on Bobsujbt , with criticisms on Hiawatha ^ Browning , and LandcTr ; and some other papers wbich we have not read .
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Thoro is something inexpressibly tragic in the thought of wlint is going on beneath many n surfuce apparently bo calm . We are shouting with laughter at the drolleries of nn actor whoBo heart is aching for the little one
dying at home , or whose life is shadowed by some terrible calamity ; and we read with captious severity , or the merest indifference , the book or article which has been written under conditions of moral or physical torture such as would not simply disarm criticism , if we knew of them , but make us marvel that anything was written at all . The pleasant author of " Tangled Talk , " in Taifs Magazine ^ writes like the gayest of serene and happy minds : and yet this month he informs us , when referring to a former articl e ,
that " the writer penned this buoyant passage propped up on a sofa , with the perspiration in drops on his forehead , and hyosciamus rapidly lowering his pulse . " What a picture ! The buoyant sentences jotted down in such a condition are perhaps not a whit the worse for the pain which accompanied their production , but he , the writer , was the worse for them ! Nor is the case a rare one . A friend of ours for more than two years has written almost daily when the state of his head emphatically told him he should do no work had not Necessity spoken with still sterner emphasis ; and it is
known to many that Harriet Martineau has for months been writing in the intervals of sufferings which would have quelled a spirit less energetic , and obscured a mind less bright . Tragic it is to think of Literature pursued under such conditions ; and yet while sickness and sorrow lame so many—while the struggles of authorship are so severe , and the rewards so precarious , a Minister , fully aware of these things , can take 8751 . out of the 1200 / . set aside for " learning and genius , " give it to persons whose claims are naval , military , and engineering ! There is something which demands the most explicit clearing up from Lord Palmjgrston in the distribution he has been bold enough to make of the money entrusted to his care . Parliament awards 1200 / . to the relief of " learning and genius , " and of
this Lord Palmebston only gives 325 / .: the rest he has given for services , worthy indeed of recognition , but coming under no extension of the terms " learning and genius . " General Cathcart earned the pension of 300 / . a-year for his daughters ; but why that pension—nearly equalling in amount the whole of what has been given to Literature—should be taken from a fund which ostensibly belongs to Literature , Science , and Art , it will be difficult for Lord Pauherston to explain . If Parliament means to give only 325 ^ . a year to Literature , Science , and Art , let that be distinctly stated and understood ; but it is a mockery to pretend that 1200 / . is awarded when a Minister may appropriate 875 / . to any purpose he thinks fit . There are surely members of sufficient courage , and with sufficient interest in Literature , to call Lord Paxmerston to account for this ?
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SOUTHEY AND WATER . Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey . Edited by his Son-in-law , John Wood Warter , B . D . Vols . III . and IV . Longman and Co . Southey ' s writing was at no time of that powerful kind which could bear dilution and preserve any flavour . In his correspondence we have it well watered ; and this in the obvious sense of dilution , and in the punning sense of editorial addition : John Wood Warter being of all editors known to us the most feeble , the most dilute , the most intolerable . The Letters we characterized when noticing the two first volumes ; the two last are even less interestingfor they have none of the boyish hopes and boyish confidence ,
, none of the early struggles , none of the rare but interesting glimpses of celebrated people . They are utterly cominonplace . Their contents are mainly respecting the Quarterly Review and Southey ' s contributions thereto , and the various works which he was engaged in writing . Soutbey is always feeling himself aggrieved by Murray , who pays him extravagant prices ; and yet we never know what it is of which Southey complains . Some of the letters are about Lord Byron , and it is curious to observe in them the serious conviction in Southey ' s mind of Byron being really the servant of Satan ; curious also the absurd way in which Southey assumes an equality of wit between himself and Byron .
If it were not for John Wood Warter , these volumes would be among the dullest of the dull ; but he curries imbecility in editing to such a height that an occasional laugh lightens the reader ' s labour . We will cull a passage or two from the Letters for the reader ' s amusement , and then for the like purpose allow Mr . Warter to exhibit himself . Southey had written an article in the Quarterly , in which some interpolations respecting the Iron Duke had been made : — It is not unlikely that I may offend Croker by the mannor in which ( without alluding to him ) I have pointed out the impolicy and injustice of his interpolations . If it be so , so it may be . lie may say what he pleases in hia own person , and call black white if ho likes it , but it is presuming too much to do this in mine . Fools that these people are ! as if thcro were any living man who is more disposed to render full justice to the Duke of Wellington than I am , or who had equally the will and the power to bestow upon him the highest and most lasting praise .
This modest statement is followed three weeks after by a singular correction : — I had no opportunity , when last wo mot , to toll you what has passed concerning tho Quarterly lieview . In consequence of my lottor to GifTord , which you saw , 1 found that the interpolations came from no less u peruonagc than tho Duko himself , who thought proper , through Crokcr , to make mo hia tool . I apoko as became mo upon the occasion : inaiatctl upon stopping the prouH , carried my point , struck out tho
falsehoods which had been inserted , and repluccd whnt had been struck out . Upon seeing the former part of the article ( tho proofs of which hud not been sent me ) , I liud a passago interpolated about tho Convention of Cintra , which ia contrary to my own expressed opinion . Thin I ahull rouiat , and inaiat upon it that nothing hereafter be inserted in any paper of mine without my consent ; otherwise I will withdraw from tho work . I had an interview at tho Admiralty after tho business , and it wub curioua to observe how carefully tho subject was avoided , and yet what concessions wore made , and civilities ahown , in reference to it .
The Duke , interpolating praise of himself , is , wo must confess , somewhat incredible to us . Here is n bit of autobiography-: — With as boyiah a heart uh ever , I begin to luivo a grey head , and many symptom * that tho noonday of lifo ia gone by . In tho yoar 1798 1 once wrote 1200 linea in a
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CQQ T H E L . E A D E R . [ No . 330 , Saturday , 'OOU " ' —^ m ^^^ ^^^^^^^ mi ^ mmmimmmmm ^ mmmmtm mi ^^^^ am ^ m ^ m ^ m ^^ mmtmmmimmm ^^^ m ^—m ^ mmimimmii ^ mmmmmmm ^ mmm ^^^^ .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), July 19, 1856, page 688, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2150/page/16/
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