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might have been so, but we are bound to express our conviction that it is not so. The press, indeed, has not been idle in India, but we should be sorry if the Indian services were obliged to stake their intellectual reputation on what it has produced. We Anglo-Indians have evidently brought with us the courage and energy of our native island; why have we left behind us our native wit, humour and imagination? We have succeeded as soldiers, as sailors, as statesmen, as judges as magistrates; why have we so failed, (we say it with the fear of the Minerva press of India, of the Delhi Sketch Book, and even the hydra-headed Calcutta and Mofussil newspaper press before our eyes,) why have we failed so signally as literati?

In the first place it is necessary, before attempting to answer this question, to justify the assertion on which it rests. An indignant crowd starts up, and like a once celebrated preacher, disposes of the hypothesis by denying the fact.

Who can doubt that the mild and respectable author of "The Gong" believes in his heart that he has conferred a literary benefit on his brother officers in India? or that Dr. Moses often reads with complacency his record of an "Englishman's Life in India," which might have been exempted from the stigma of common place book-making if it had been published a century and a half ago; but which, appearing as it did in 1853, can be regarded as little more than the publication of a private and very uninteresting diary? The author of "Tales of the Forest" will never be persuaded that he has written a book, which bright blue covers and clear type cannot redeem from the obvious curse of dreary dullness. So confident are Col. Markham and Mr. Bentley in the universal interest attaching to the number of beasts and birds slain by the former, that a splendid volume, royal octavo sizecontaining equal amounts of type and margin, is unhesitatingly devoted to the thrilling record. But when we come to the really clever authors on the list, we are met with an assurance which almost overpowers argument: who can doubt that Mr. Torrens was the most brilliant genius and ablest author of his day, when the fragments of his writings are presented to us with such ostentatious and unstinted generosity, and we are assured by his biographer that while these fragments are quite good enough for us, Mr. Torrens was in fact spoilt by coming into such company, so little capable of appreciating him: he was a bright light in India,-but he would have been a star of the first magnitude* had he stayed at home.

Were we not writing under the protection of an incognito which cannot be penetrated, we should hardly venture to pen the

A Selection from the writings of the late Henry W. Torrens, Esq., B. A. Memoir, page iv.

succeeding sentence. We should hardly dare to charge as one of its shortcomings against Anglo-Indian society and the literature in which that society is reflected, a want of knowledge of the world. Were we to bring forward an accusation of theft, murder, adultery, or all the seven deadly sins rolled into one, we should be met with a listless denial or a laughing assent. But it is a fearful thing to be ignorant of the world. The lately emancipated cadet who brings with him the freshest fashions of Mr. Switchards's academy, the civilian who has inherited all the traditions of Haileybury licentiousness; the subaltern who has recently returned from furlough, fully persuaded that he is a roué of the first water, all start indignantly at the bare mention of an accusation from which of all others they devoutly believe themselves to be innocent. But the dispassionate observer, who is aware that the world has other phases than are presented to Haileybury lads or tavern explorers, will not hesitate to confess that "provincialism" is a marked feature in the character of Anglo-Indian society. The East Indian indeed still carries his provincialism home with him, and there he is rather proud of it. He feels flattered at being taken notice of as an eccentric who rises at strange hours in the morning, interlards his conversation with uncouth words, and delights to feed on hot dishes. He is proud, because he feels that after all to know India has been his particular work in life, and these eccentricities are awkward witnesses that this work has been performed. Nobody blames an Anglo-Indian for not knowing the world, any more than people blame a sailor for not knowing how to ride; he has been banished all his life, at least with brief and rare intervals, from Europe and civilization: he has generally speaking neglected rather than cultivated his literary taste; he may know the Pottergong district, he may know Bengal, he may know India, he may know Asia, but how should he-in the conventional sense of the phrase-know the world.

We award the full benefit of this plea to the author of "The Gong." Major Vetch may be, and we doubt not is, an exemplary officer; he does his duty in his vocation, but a little more of knowledge of the world would have convinced him that his vocation is not book making.

The title of the book is utterly meaningless: Gong is used as a mere synonyme for volume, and by way of keeping up the joke a chapter is called a toll: but as regards any latent meaning in these nicknames, this Tale, for such it is, might as well have been entitled the "Diving Bell," or the "Coach and Six," or the "Cholera Morbus," or whatever the reader pleases. The story itself is such as might be expected from an author who evidently had no store to draw on except what he had seen with his bodily eyes, and what he had read. Thus we have the ordinary routine of In

dian life, in orthodox succession, from the voyage out to the voyage home, cemented by a few of the common-place incidents of common-place novels. Had the author possessed that inward eye which enables imaginative writers to see though blind, he would have written a very different kind of book: had he possessed the sharp, hard, sensible judgment of a man of the world, he would not have written at all.

We cannot be so indulgent to Dr. Moses. A book of travels in Bombay is an insult to the denizens of that enlightened Presidency. A man is indeed at liberty to publish his observations on Indian life, but it should be under the decent disguise of a three volume novel or a missionary tract. The sepoy, the European officer, the civilian, may offer fair materials for géne painting, but are hardly to be treated as strange and unknown species, coldly classified and deliberately described. At any rate the descriptions should be accurate, as those of Dr. Moses are not. Years have dimmed our recollection of the harbour of Bombay, of the black rocks of Beach Candy, and the woodfringed beauty of Malabar Hill, but we should still detect the real points of the landscape were they to be recognised in the vague and vapid description of Dr. Moses. Slight as is our acquaintance with the sister Presidency, we venture entirely to dissent from the dogma that the "only way one can possibly get on with native servants is by constantly threatening to send them to the bazaar master and have them punished; or by withholding their pay." The whole scope of Dr. Moses' work evinces ignorance of the world: but if he did make up his mind to such a solecism as to publish a book of travels in a district four weeks from England, and as well known as Ireland, he should surely have avoided within the limits of his chosen subject the additional blunder of writing like a Griff.

We cannot venture to charge a Colonel in the royal army, and a Burlington street publisher, with ignorance of the world; we should rather be disposed to regard the work before us as a sign that they know it too well. We have a kindness for sporting authors: they have, as a rule, a genuine love of nature, and a healthiness of body which imparts a cognate health to their mind and to their books. Their works are often extremely interesting to men who have never mounted a horse or fired a gun: not principally, however, on account of their professed subject so much as the accidents by which that subject becomes surrounded.

The mere record of pigs speared and partridges shot is interesting only to the initiated; even the more dignified pursuit of bears and tigers becomes monotonous in relation after one or two anecdotes ; to the sportsmen himself each case presents, it may be, points of dif

ference from any former case, but these points are too minute to be transferred to paper, and to the general reader one tiger dies for all. Still there is a charm in sporting literature that we could ill afford to lose. We assure our yellow covered contemporary, whose wrath may have been provoked by the foregoing sentences, that we speak with perfect sincerity. It is pleasant to have occasional intercourse with men who throw off the work a day world, and boldly live to enjoy. The pleasure is increased when the sporting author evinces, as he frequently does-as the result of healthy physique a hearty admiration and a keen eye for natural beauty; or when, as is also frequently the case, the same physical and mental vigor transpire in a vein of strong, clear, sensible argument, the greatest of intellectual luxuries, or in a humorous appreciation and picturesque delineation of human nature out of doors. Hence it is that Harry Hieover is a favorite author, not only with turfites and fox hunters, but with gentlemen who sit at home at ease, with Review writers as we certify, with divines as we do not doubt hence it is that Izaak Walton's fame has nearly attained the limit of a second century. But Colonel Markham's book has no such charm: not, as we firmly believe, from incapacity on the part of the author, so much as a mistaken resolution. He seems to have set out with the idea that his book was to be a Sporting Journal, and that all foreign or incidental matter was to be rigorously excluded. The result is, a volume which all the meretricious splendor of Bentleian "getting up" cannot redeem from the fatal fault of dullness. Every now and then we catch glimpses of a life beyond bear killing; of the gallant 32d Regiment; the Mooltan campaign; Sir Charles-Napier; the snowcrowned, life-giving Himalaya;-but no sooner does the more extended view suggest itself, than it is remorselessly shut out by the too conscientious author, who will write about sport only, forgetting that what was once sport to him, may, when reduced to narrative, be death to a weary reader; and we find ourselves going over the well known ground-of awkward positions-perilous escapes-crack shots-triumphant slaughter.

Very different are the sporting articles contributed to the Calcutta Sporting Review by Mr. Henry Torrens, and reprinted in his collected works by Mr. Hume. Mr. Torrens was undoubtedly a man of genuine literary ability and cultivation. He was even a man of genius, if we will understand by that term a man of singular versatility, full of life, and by the innate force of this vitality, capable of putting himself in active sympathy with frequent varieties of many colored human character. He was not a man of genius, if we demand as an essential condition for that title, the strongest common sense, an all-controlling earnestness in seizing one of the many "clues of life," and following it out with

unvarying determination. But if there was one subject on which he was thoroughly in earnest-it was sport, and therefore his contributions to the "Calcutta Sporting Review" are in our opinion the most thoroughly characteristic of all his productions, and afford a striking proof how attractive sporting articles may be made to the general reader. But how does Mr. Torrens affect the estimation in which Indian modern literature should be held? Most favorably, had he been left alone; but we must confess that the judgment we have pronounced on the want of literary taste and dexterity in India seems to us fully confirmed by the form in which the works of Mr. Torrens, one of the most eminent of Indian literateurs, has been presented to the public by his friend and biographer, Mr. Hume. Never was there a greater blunder of a book. The Memoir is a striking instance how much cause a man may have to groaneven from the grave "Preserve me from my friends." The introductory Memoir, while injudiciously eulogistic, fails, in our judgment, to do justice to Mr. Torrens' memory. Much is omitted necessary to a full understanding of the character, much is inserted which is out of place in a Memoir. Of Mr. Torrens, in his official capacity, which in this country constitutes at least half the man, we hear little or nothing except of his share in promoting the Affghan campaign. Unless we are mistaken, stories might have been told of Mr. Torrens in the Secretariat Department, characteristic of, and by no means discreditable to him, and amusing to the reader. Unless we have been misinformed, the ponderous solemnity of red-tapism was often ruthlessly violated by the clever but eccentric Under-Secretary, who would relieve the monotony of an official despatch by flights of fancy enough to whiten the hair of ancient clerks in the Department, and cause a ludicrous anxiety to high officials lest they should be compromised by their literary subordinate. Mr. Hume, indeed, seems inclined to pass over the official life of his hero as unworthy of notice; he tells us that India was the ruin of him; that great abilities were wasted on this barren and ungrateful soil. In the name of the Indian community we repudiate the imputation. Abler men than Mr. Torrens have found in this country an ample scope for all the talent they possessed and especially is India well calculated to develop and encourage that miscellaneous, indefinite sort of cleverness, which finds less room for exercise in the confined range of English professional life. Even in the case of a mere author-a man of letters in the strictest sense of the word-we doubt whether there is any fatal obstacle to success in the circumstances of Indian life. After all, an author residing in India is not obliged to publish in India; he enters the English literary market on exactly the same terms as other competitors,

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