POPULAR BOOKS OF THE MONTH. Mirabeau a Life-History in Four Books. London. Smith, Elder, and Co. The author tells us that he was induced to attempt this work by many reasons; amongst others, that we have no life of Mirabeau; that the French have no readable memoirs of him; that in all our sketches, which are as numerous as lives are scarce, not only are there very many malignant and scandalous false statements fastened upon him, but the actions of his life are mis-stated, mis-dated, or omitted; and that he considered him as an ill-used and mis-judged man, Now, we think it very likely that the English public, particularly at this moment, would be very glad to have presented to it a life of Mirabeau, written with the declared inducements that stimulated our author to the composition of his two volumes. But he, from whom such a "Life-History," to be acceptable, must proceed, ought to be a man who scouts utterly and contemptuously the rubbish about "Hero Worship," of which we have already had too much. From such a biographer we should have no assumption that the man he was writing about was a hero, with an immediate servile prostration of himself before his idol; from such a biographer we should not be told that to be in earnest is always to be sincere, and that energy of will is the same thing as force of mind. Unfortunately, the present author is a great admirer of Thomas Carlyle: unfortunately, we say, because, although that eccentric genius puts forth many things, the substance of which is admirable, he wrings out many other things which, when they are not deformed common-places, are much worse. Our author "wanted a hero," as Byron says, adding, "an uncommon want," but this is by no means the case now-a-days. Heroes are “as plenty as blackberries," and picked as easily as though there were no thorns on the bush. Our author has selected Mirabeau, and holds him forth as complacently as though he had not pricked his fingers. Mirabeau, as an author, gave no evidence of extraordinary abilities. His impetuous will, and as often, perhaps, his want of money, impelled him to the production of pamphlets which afterwards, probably, he did not care to remember, and which now certainly the world will not consent to read. As a politician, he shewed no uncommon sagacity. He urged on the Revolution, and then (when no one had occasion to put on far-sighted spectacles) foresaw the consequences of his acts. He never accomplished, whatever his intentions may have been, any memorable political good in his life. Look on what is left us of his speeches. Is there any great depth and clearness of thought, any force of reasoning that causes us to lift up the hands and eyes, any noble appeal to the feelings that makes those hands work convulsively, and those eyes fill with water! Nothing of the kind. Mirabeau was a great orator. "A power of life," as Madame de Staël expressed it, proceeded from him. In the Assembly the man was in his element. Here was the "action, action, action." He who has writhed under a respectable actor, with the words of Shakspeare dawdling from his mouth, and been present when the elder Kean has discharged from his lips the fustian of some modern playwright, may form some conception of the mighty power of oratory. Such power,-and mighty it was,-Mirabeau could command. In all other public respects he was not greatly better than an ordinary man. Meanwhile, his private character was extremely bad; and in one particular, which we shall not name, he was as great a beast as ever human charity was called upon to devise palliations for. And mark how the author of the "Life-History" of this hero, calls upon human charity to do this. Mirabeau, separated from his wife, runs away with the wife of another man, whereupon, "As for the united lovers, they resided three weeks in undisturbed retirement at Verrières, and though, by their late rash act, ruined and broken in the world's eye, think ye, they were not happy?" The author then, after cautioning as against too harsh a judgment, adds, "If thou wouldst know how to express thyself on this most questionable act, we say-in silence; but if silence be impossible to thee, why then weep!" Weep! the reader who knows to what such connexions usually lead, will hardly even stare when he is told that Mirabeau and the lady, who is called his wife-sister, because she happened to be neither, quarrelled and parted; that he afterwards ran away with another lady with whom he could not agree, and that the latter portion of his life furnished a spectacle of moral degradation. As a specimen of the ordinary style of this performance, we give the following. After describing the mode of life of Mirabeau, and the first fugitive with him, the author says. "Truly, this is very beautiful; a finer picture of united love it might be difficult to draw. If, as we believe, in plodding over the weary mountain of Life to that unknown much-loved Shadow-Land, which lies on the further side of the Death-river flowing through the valley beyond the Life-mountain—” Is not this enough? Mirabeau has an interview with Marie Antoinette. On his approach, the Queen pays him a compliment, upon which the author proceeds to say, “And so she has acknowledged their equality; and King Mirabeau and Queen Antoinette discourse together. What that discourse was, no man knows; no man, to the end of time, ever shall know; that there ever was, or ever will be, a conversation holden on this earth one would more desire to know, is dubious! The conversation between the two whispering conspirators in the rehearsal, was nothing to this. That conversation, if we remember rightly, no one ever did or ever will know." The above will give the reader some notion of this book, which is of the startlish, marvelling, "did you ever?" kind. What would seem rather curious in it, if we did not know that the author had been engaged upon " Hero-Worship," is that, mightily sensitive about Mirabeau, he expresses his opinion of the actions of others with the utmost freedom. Helen Charteris: A Novel. London. Bentley. In these days when "Who peppers the highest is surest to please," and all manner of extravagance of plot, character, and sentiment, seems to be swallowed with avidity, it is hard to say what kind of reception the novel before us is likely to meet. The endeavour of the authoress has been to represent life as it is, and manners as they exist in one of our cathedral cities. The reader who looks for "intense" writing, who expects to be made a witness of startling situations, unexpected or impossible meetings, unforeseen relationships, and "all that sort of thing," will be not grossly but thoroughly disappointed in this book. In default of intensity, he must be content to put up with tenderness and feeling; for startling situations he must accept probable ones; for incredible rencontres natural reunions; and for the rest, such of the characters as retain no relations know perfectly well who they were, and those that have them know perfectly well who they are. But the heroine, who is supposed herself to have taken up the pen, is not like the "needy knife-grinder," she has a story to tell, and a very interesting one it is; and a great many characters figure in it who concur to its consummation. It may be observed,-although the observation is not new- that it is no easy matter to invent a story which shall be at once probable and interesting; and that while to draw characters of some kind in some way or the other, is no difficult task, to draw them after nature is one of the hardest things imaginable. Now, the present authoress has striven to give us a probable and interesting story, illustrated by natural characters, and she has so far succeeded that she has made us think more than once of Miss Austen, and made us doubt (and this we offer as no slight compliment) whether we were not reading another work from the pen that gave us "Margaret Capel" and "Mr. Warenne." We would earnestly recommend our readers to get this book and peruse it attentively. Let them mark how clearly and strongly a character may be brought out by a succession of minute touches, laid on with care although directed with skill; and then we think they will confess that they have not seen in modern domestic fiction any characters much better drawn than the moral and musical Archdeacon, his wife (a perfect gem) Mrs. Beaumont, and Clary, the Creole,—a delineation, we think, hardly to be surpassed. The manner in which the heroine tells her story and discloses her own character is admirable; and the feminine delicacy of tact with which her lover Leycester is shewn to be a heartless scoundrel, without being proclaimed to be one, is a stroke of art worthy of the highest praise. The Town: by Leigh Hunt. London. Smith, Elder, and Co. The principal portion of these volumes appeared several years since, in the Monthly Supplement to Leigh Hunt's London Journal," and we are told, that, should the present work meet the approbation of the public, the author will be happy to continue it. The nature of Leigh Hunt is so frank, genial, and confiding, that we are not certain, although his poetry may not be the worse for it, whether it is not on that account that it has never been justly valued by the public at large. A delicate appreciation of fancies or emotions generated by a deep sensibility, is only to be expected from the few; and when those fancies or emotions are sought to be made intelligible by the use of-so to speak-too everyday a language, they are further off than ever from vulgar apprehension, and suggest a suspicion of insincerity or affectation, which never had existence in the breast of the poet. But in works like the one before us, Mr. Hunt is at home-so much so that the reader is, as it were, in the same room with him, listening to a free and easy discourse upon men, manners, and things, for ever interesting to all who have hearts and souls about them. He writes precisely as he would talk, and in such works as the one we are considering, that is the very perfection of treatment,—always provided that the talker in type be a man like Mr. Hunt, thoroughly conversant with his theme, and conversant because a love of it made him so. There are one or two points in which we cannot agree with our author. Speaking of Dr. Johnson, of whom we think he forms too low an estimate, he quotes Boswell, who says, "He told Mr. Hook that he wished to have a City Club, and asked him to collect one; but,' said he, don't let them be patriots."" Mr. Hunt adds, "Boswell accompanied him one day to the club, and found the members very sensible, well-behaved men,' that is to say, Hook had collected a body of decent listeners. This, however, is melancholy." Not at all, for it is not the fact. A mere "body of decent listeners," Johnson never could abide. Tyers, the printer, who knew him well, said he was "like a ghost, that would never speak until it was spoken to," and Mr. Hunt further on quotes Johnson's words to Sir John Hawkins. "A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity: wine, at a tavern, exhilarates my spirits, and prompts me to free conversation, and an interchange of discourse with those whom I most love. I dogmatize and am contradicted; and in this conflict of opinion and sentiments I find delight." Again, in his account of Richardson, Mr. Hunt remarks that Dr. Johnson “had so much respect for him that he took part with him in a preposterous undervaluing of Fielding." Now, if by "taking part" he meant that the Doctor joined a league for the purpose indicated, it is not the case: Aaron Hill and other friends and flatterers of Richardson did that. Johnson had a personal hostility to Fielding, and spoke slightingly of him, though he sat up all night to read his "Amelia.” He said what he did not mean, which is little to his honour; but let the provocation-the one ungenerous act of Fielding-be stated. In the first chapter of the seventh book of "Tom Jones," Fielding says, "Now, we who are admitted behind the scenes of this great theatre of Nature--and no author ought to write anything but dictionaries and spelling-books who hath not this privilege-" a gross sarcasm levelled at Johnson at the moment he was struggling through his great work in comparative obscurity. Such insults rankle when they touch a poor man. Had Fielding lived to see how dictionaries may be written! We must take one more exception. Mr. Hunt calls Sir Walter Raleigh "that romantic and equivocal person." Now that Raleigh was not without faults, no one who is acquainted with his history can deny; but it makes "our dander rise," as Sam Slick says, when we see Mr. Hunt, in a spirit of uncalled-for humanity, extenuating, or at least striving to explain, the faults, fooleries, and ingratitude of the Earl of Essex. Does Mr. Hunt call Raleigh equivocal because he sought the ruin of that petulant favourite? Well; but was Raleigh-the man whose deeds in the first instance made him a favourite of Elizabeth, who was "chased from the Court," as one of his contemporaries calls it, two or three times by Essex, who reinstated himself each time by still greater deeds, who got nothing but what he earned, and, after all, not so much as some who did and could do nothing, was he to play the magnanimous with a man who was at the very moment plotting his destruction, who had before sought to destroy him, and who had destroyed others? If so, let him be censured, but let not others escape. Bentley's Cabinet Library. The Clockmaker; or, Sayings and Doings of Sam Slick. Series I. II. and III.-Chinese Legends; or, The Porcelain Tower. London. Richard Bentley. These are republications. It would be ridiculously superfluous were we to enter upon an examination of the claims of the renowned Sam Slick to the favour of the public. Having made our sides ache by a second perusal of these three series, we see how natural and proper it was that the sayings and doings of that quaint, shrewd, and wise person should have become so popular on their first appearance. We see, also, that their salt will preserve them, that their attraction will endure; and, now that they are produced at a cheap rate, that they cannot fail of being widely circulated. The Chinese Legends" of Thomas Henry Sealy, who died at the early age of thirty-seven in the summer of the present year, is a work admirably adapted for the Christmas fireside. The design of conveying a familiar picture of the customs and manners of the natives of the Celestial Empire in a series of comic sketches in prose and verse was altogether original, and has been executed with the utmost humour and spirit. There is a something of Ingoldsby in the structure of Sealy's verse, but the humour is all his own. (By the way, Sam Slick reminds us that we have received a "Sketch of Clock and Watch-making," by Edward Grafton. This little work gives us a popular history of horology from the earliest to the present time, and will be read with pleasure, being nicely done, and, moreover, containing information useful to those who carry a watch, or are about to purchase one.) Christian Consolation: Discourses on the Reliefs afforded by the Gospel under different states and trials of the Christian Life. By Daniel Moore, M.A. Bowdery and Kerby. An admirable little Volume, well calculated to afford consolation in the most trying scenes of life, and which ought to be found in every family library. The Closing Scene: or, Christianity and Infidelity contrasted, in the Last Hours of Remarkable Persons. By the Rev. Erskine Neale, M.A. Longman and Co. The design of the author is "to prove by instances how dreary a scene is the infidel's death-bed-how hopeless, how sad!" while, on the other hand, he has striven to point out by example that there is "a hope that maketh not ashamed;" and that the Christian, in his dying hour, may fearlessly calculate on the presence and protection of Him who utters to his followers these mighty words of consolation and hope-I go to prepare a place for you. The examples are, Thomas Paine, John Locke, Frederic the Great, Bishop Barrington, Lord Bolingbroke, Blanco White, Charlotte Elizabeth, Madame de Staël, Volney, Dr. James Hope, George Brummell, Sarah Martin, Mrs. Hemans, Theodore Hook, David Hume, Hutton, of Birmingham, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Jeremy Bentham, and the Rev. Robert Anderson. The short memorial of the last most amiable and pious divine, as well as that of Bishop Barrington, will be read with unfeigned delight; whilst the melancholy death-bed scenes of Thomas Paine, Volney, and Shelley give rise to feelings of unmitigated sadness. We think the judgment on Theodore Hook much too severe. The writer assumes the charge of his being a defaulter true, which we are no means prepared to do. If Hook had paid the defalcation supposed to be due to the Government, it would have been an admission by him of the justice of the charge, which he always denied. That he was culpably negligent was true, and cruelly he suffered for it. The treatment he met with from his public friends (to whom he rendered such important services) deserves that eternal stamp of baseness, to which it is surely doomed. As to his talents, they were not wholly wasted; he has left behind him memorials of them, which present us with pictures of life truthful and admirable; and, while the pungency of his satire was crushing, (and it generally fell on those who well-deserved it), no writer contributed more largely to the stock of harmless humour and good-fellowship. His life was one of constant temptation; and the portions of his "Diary" which have been published prove his self-condemnation and his inward religious feelings. May the earth lie light upon him! The Sun-Dial of Armoy; a Poem in Latin and English, by Richard Lord Bishop of Down and Connor. A charming Volume, which will be prized both on account of its earnest piety and the beautiful poetry to which it is united. We quote from it the following lines: "Solis adventu, fugiunt tenebræ ; ' Admonet Gnomon; meliora vates "Solis adventu fugiunt tenebræ ;' "Night flies before the orient morning,' "Night flies before the sun ascending;' The sun goes down, the shadow spreads; The American Female Poets, with Biographical and Critical Notes. An attractive volume, now first introducing to us many votaries of the Muses in the New World. It will be an agreeable addition to the poetical library. The following poem, on account of its beauty, we cannot refrain from presenting to our readers : THE NIGHT COMETH. YE, who in the field of human life, Quickening seeds of wisdom fain would sow, Pause not for the angry tempest's strife, Shrink not from the noontide's fervid glow Labour on, while yet the light of day Sheds abroad its pure and blessed ray, Ye, who at man's mightiest engine stand Ye, to whom a prophet voice is given, Utter forth the oracles of heaven Earth gives back the echoes as they fall: Rouse the world's great heart, while yet the day For the night cometh ! Ye, who in home's narrow circle dwell, Where love's flame lights up the household hearth, Weave the silken bond, and frame the spell, Pleasant toil is yours;-the light of day On nought holier sheds its blessed ray, Yet the night cometh! |