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1825. MS. Notes on the last Number of the Quarterly Review.

politics. The increased attention paid to our domestic intercourse, will perhaps justify the devotion of thirty pages to rail-roads-and similar considerations may demand thirty pages more on spinning-jennies and steamengines. I do not object to these articles-the latter, as far as I understand the subject, is a good, seasonable, and sensible one-calculated to dissipate some erroneous ideas, though the writer himself is not a little puzzled between the results of practice and the deductions of theory; but then, in the same number, we have sixteen pages on the Funding System-fifteen on the Prussian Constitution, and thirtyseven on the Irish Church. Let me play Joe Hume for a while, and give the tottle of them wholly :Rail-roads and Canals, Artizans and Machinery,

Funding System,

Prussian Constitution,
Irish Church,

30

30

16

15

37

Total, 128 pages,

Out of 266, almost half. I think it must be confessed to be the most Edinburgh-Review-looking Quarterly which we have had as yet the pleasure of receiving. Of these topics, I leave the Funding System to those concerned, having a pretty theory of my own on the subject, which I shall broach more at length on proper occasion. The paper on Prussian reform is a sensible and excellent one, but anticipated, in a great measure, by young Russell's book. Of the Irish church I shall say somewhat by and by.

never

477

not milk-how he cried on going to
school-how he got a fever there-
how he took lodgings at Richmond-
how he courted his wife in a thunder
storm-(just think of Hayley and a
thunder-storm together; were it a
gardy-loo it would be consistent)

how he got a dancing-master at
Edinburgh, which affords the Laureate
a joke, in his own droll way, at Scotch
metaphysics-how Garrick rejected
his play-how he behaved like an un-
feeling prater about feeling to his
wife-how he called himself Hotspur,
or acquiesced in being so called, in
his correspondence, for which Harry
Percy, if he could have revived for
two minutes, would have demolished
him with a fillip of his gauntlet, &c.
&c.-all this and much more foolery
you will find in the first FIFTY pages
of the Quarterly. It is really too bad.
And then the innocent notions of the
Laureate on literature, viz. how cou-
plets (in which Dryden wrote Absa-
Tom and Achitophel, and Pope the Il-
iad) are the worst sort of verse for
long narration-how Bamfylde and
Russell, (who are they?) are poets of
great promise-how vile a thing, and
condemnatory to everlasting gibbet-
ting, it is to sneer at the Fleece of the
Dyer-how great a crime it is to criti-
cise malevolently epic poems by such
fine writers as Hayley, (p. 277,)-how
that driveller was, by grace of the
public, king of the bards of Britain,
(Cowper being at that time alive,)
and, in consequence of so being, offer-
ed the laureateship, as if Whitehead,
and Cibber, and Pye, who held that
office, were kings of poetry. All this,
and much more, I say again, may be
read in the front of Mr Coleridge's re-
view, as a pretty monument of the pro-
gress of the art of criticism at the close
of the first quarter of the nineteenth
The only laudable thing
century.
about it is, that as the book is Col-
bourn's, it shews some bibliopolic li-
berality, (a commodity, I am sorry to
say, rare in the present generation,)
in John Murray to admit a puff in
its favour, in the pages of which the
court of ultimate appeal is composed
of himself.

The Review opens most inauspi-
ciously. Hayley's life!!! and review-
ed by the Doctor!!! I have no pa-
tience with this want of common sense.
A more contemptible writer, and hard-
ly a more contemptible man, than this
existed.
drivelling creature,
Mean in every attempt at literary effort,
and paltry in every action of his life, he
is not worth a page in the London
Magazine, far less to be the subject
of the opening article in the Quarterly.
Then, see the omnivorous rapacity of
the worthy Laureate the immoderate
swallow for minute facts. Of this
idiot we are told all the movements,
with the accuracy which the biogra-
phers of Milton have deemed it their
duty to expend upon the life of that
poet. We are told how his nurse had

The next literary article, No. IV. is on Theodric, which is shewn up fairly enough, and evidently with kind feeling towards the proprietor of that unfortunate work. However, as I have said enough on Campbell already in

my remarks on the Edinburgh, I shall here content myself with extracting the conclusion of this article, hoping my old friend Tom will take the hint.

"There is little to say of the Fugitive Pieces, to which 100 pages of this volume are assigned; they were born, we believe, and should have been suffered to die and be buried, in a magazine; much will be excused in poems found in such a place, of which a more rigorous account will be demanded, if the author, by collecting them, seems to assign them a positive value. One very fervent and furious piece, Stanzas to the Memory of the Spanish Patriots killed in resisting the Regency and the Duke of Angouleme, is worthy of preservation for its hard words; it is levelled against kings, bigots, and Bourbons,' who mangle martyrs with hangman fingers;' of cowl'd demons of the Inquisitorial cell,' and 'Antochthones of hell,' who are bid to go and

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Smile o'er the gaspings of spine-broken men; Preach, perpetrate damnation in your den.'

"It was due to Mr Campbell's name to place any poem of his on our lists-it is with pain that we have discharged our duty towards him, and we close the volume with sensations of regret. If we have not cited any passage, or any one of the smaller pieces, of which we think less unfavourably than of the rest, it has not been because we were unwilling to bestow our approbation on him, but because we remembered his former esti

mation, and felt that such languid praise as we could honestly give to the very

best lines in the volume, would be no compliment to one who has ranked so high as he has. There is, and has been for some time, a growing persuasion, slowly and reluctantly entertained by the public, (for Mr Campbell has ever found in the public a favourable and faithful audience,) that the character of his mind is to be feeble and minute. Such a poem as Theodric must impart fearful strength to such an opinion. Yet we will struggle against the conviction; literary history is not without examples of failures great as this, and there may be circum

stances of mind or body which may account for them. Mr Campbell is in the prime of life-he has placed his poetical reputation in the greatest danger-we cannot suppose him insensible to the peril, or careless of the issue; let him, then, withdraw from every avocation, the tendency of which is to debilitate or dissipate the mind, and with matured faculties, and increased knowledge, make ex. ertions commensurate with the necessity for them; for our parts, we will cheer him on his way, and forgiving, or rather forgetting, this unworthy publication, contribute gladly our help to replace him in that respectable rank from which we are sincerely sorry that he has declined."

Travelling over canals and railroads, we come to a pleasant article on Marianne Baillie's Lisbon; and then, again cutting the Artizans, we arrive at Daru's Venice, an admirable work, and most excellently reviewed. It is, in truth, a most instructive article; but the application to the liberals, and the exposition of their inconsistency in bewailing Venice, is quite thrown away. These people only hate England, and would mourn the overthrow of the Old Man of the Mountains, if they thought it could by any possible sidewind annoy her.

It is needless to praise Barrow's article on Africa. Such papers as these have long been the peculiar glory of the Quarterly, and it gives me always great pleasure to contrast them with similar attempts in its Northern rival.

Washington Irving-puffed-and Stewart Rose's jeu-d'esprit (a pleasant one in truth,) puffed also. I wonder why. Perhaps I could guess-n'importe.

The last article is on Ireland. I am glad to see the Quarterly facing this question manfully at last. There was a degree of cowardice in not having done so long ago. There is still some shirking in this affair, but the

* Is not the conclusion of this puff on Washington Irving un peu fort? We exclaim, as we part with him, "Very pleasant hast thou been to me, my brother Jonathan !" Had Hone made this application of Scripture, there would have been an outcry of blasphemy. After all, it is a wrong quotation. The verse being, 2 Sam. i. 26. "I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan-very pleasant hast thou been unto me." And the true quotation would have better expressed the circumstances in which Irving now is. His friends, who remember how pleasant he was once to them, must feel, as this reviewer evidently does, very much distressed at seeing him in his present state.

case of the Irish clergy is well stated. I was rejoiced to see that truly apostolic man, Jebb, Bishop of Limerick, appreciated as he deserves. The atrocious misrepresentations of Wakefield are duly exposed, and the blustering bullying of the Catholic Association, and its fabled millions, properly shown up. Due tribute is paid to the merits of the author of Rock Detected, (the Rev. Mr O'Sullivan,) and of Deelan, the nom de guerre of Mr Phelan. You must let me extract the concluding part, and then conclude my own epistle.

"In what way can the extermination of the clergy, and the sale or confiscation of church property, diminish these acknowledged and overwhelming evils? Will the subtraction of that wealth from Ireland, which now, according to the reformers, enables 12 or 1300 clergymen to wallow in luxury;-will the addition of it, or any part of it, to the sums drawn out of the country by absentees, be the most direct or most successful mode of curtailing the cupidity of landlords, or raising the character and increasing the comforts of the poor? Is this the panacea for the deeply-seated maladies of a sensitive and despairing people? Admirable scheme of reformation! a most original method of diffusing comfort and contentment, by exasperating sufferings already so difficult to endure, and from the Pandora's box of Irish affliction expelling even the last refuge of the miserable-hope!

"And can it be supposed that a British parliament will lend itself to such monstrous injustice? What security can there be for property of any description, if that which is unquestionably the most ancient in the island, and to which no man, except the ecclesiastical order, can urge the slightest claim, is to be swept away? what at no distant period, after such a precedent, must be the fate of those estates to which multitudes of poor miserable men can and do point as the inheritance of their fathers, and as of right belonging to themselves? What answer shall be made to the exclamation of these unhappy outcasts; that park, under the wall of which I live, and that mansion and demesne, which I can scarcely venture to approach, are mine: they were wrested from my family by violence, and I hope to win them again.' Let the landed proprietors, who vote for plundering the church, look well to the consequences:

. Eheu ! Quam tumere in nosmet legem sancimus iniquam !'

"But while we mention this, we rely upon a higher principle, upon the compassion of Parliament, for the depressed population of Ireland, and its firm regard to the high claims of truth, and justice, and religion. That regard has been evinced upon too many occasions to suffer us to doubt for a moment of its activity upon the present; if, indeed, we were disposed to appeal to motives, that come more personally near to the hearts and interests of the British part of the legislature, we would venture to remind them that this is not a merely Irish

question; although it is the present policy, indeed, of the reformers, to separate the two branches of the Protestant Church of this empire, and to represent the character and fate of the one as by no means connected with the other. The time, indeed, is not yet come for a successful attack upon the Church in England; it is rooted at present too deeply in the hearts of the people; they feel too strongly how close it is associated with their best sympathies and most grateful recollections, with the liberties and the greatness of their country; and they have, within these few years, given ample proof, that they are not yet disposed to resign it. We are told, therefore, that the cases are not analogous; that the reasoning which applies to one portion of the church has no force in reference to the other. Our reply is, that their arguments, (we call them such in courtesy,) if successfully adduced against the ecclesiastical establishment in Ireland, will, ere long, be brought with augmented force against the church of our fathers in this country. It is urged that in Ireland the tithes are a tax upon the land, unfriendly to agriculture, vexatious to the farmer, and a source of eternal heart-burnings and litigation between the tithe-owner and the farmer? Is it affirmed, that the clergy are wallowing in wealth, spending their time at the watering-places, and rendering no service for their insulting riches? and will not the same assertions be as colourably hazarded in England? Is it held to be a hardship upon the Irish Roman Catholic to pay tithe to a Protestant minister, and will not the English dissenter exclaim, on the same grounds, that he too is supporting a church which he approves not? Is it affirmed that the Irish clergy are odious to the people, and will it not be discovered that a similar charge applies to the English? Shall the apostolical character of the church in Ireland, and the antiquity of its possessions, oppose no impediment in that case, and with such an example will they be regarded here?

Shall church property be sold, and the clerical order reduced or abolished, although in extensive tracts of country the clergy are the only resident gentry, the only effective instruments for civilizing and improving the people, and will the spoliators shrink from their argument, because our gentry are resident, and our people are civilized, and all the machinery of order and improvement is working with the steadiness and power of a steam-engine? Shall the legislature, well knowing that absenteeship is the bane of Ireland, and attaching inexpressible importance to the expenditure of their incomes by Irish proprietors in their native land, throw, nevertheless, into that bottomless gulph all the property of the church, and will that same authority be scrupulous in this country, where every parish is furnished with its nobles, its gentry, or its yeomen, and absenteeship is a term unknown? If it shall be by false representations that the reformers work the ruin and riot in the spoils of the Irish church, will they be likely to be bankrupt in those commodities, where, to the stimulus of cupidity, is added the stimulus of success? Archimedes himself could not have wished for a better standing-place to shake the world

from, than the spirit of mischief would possess in the fallen establishment of Ireland to extend the convulsion, and effect the demolition, of its kindred branch. But it will not be; we are persuaded that a high destiny yet awaits both branches of this united church; it has passed, like Christianity itself, through many storms and tempests, through evil report and calumny, but, by the Providence of God, it still survives. The same Providence will continue to watch over it, and distant generations will successively sit under its shadow, and rejoice in its fruits."

friend in Bristol, I say ditto-ditto, To this, like Mr Burke's mercantile

Mr Reviewer!

On the whole, this is an excellent number of the Quarterly, and augurs well of Mr Coleridge's capacity and success.

He shews a determination to meet many political questions hitherto overlooked in the Review over which he presides, and an effort to perserve, if not its literary spirit, yet its literary tone. I shall talk more decidedly, if I live, this time twelvemonth. Yours ever,

A CONSTANT READER.

ODOHERTY ON ENGLISH SONGS.

I HAVE been tumbling over Ritson's songs listlessly this morning, for want of something better to do, and cannot help thinking, that a much better selection and arrangement might be made. He assigns 301 pages to love-songs, and but 228 to all others. The collection of ancient ballads, which concludes the volume, is not very much in place in a book of songs; and, besides, is far inferior to what we now know such a collection ought to be. Now, I submit, without at all disparaging that "sublime and noble-that sometimes calm and delightful-but more frequently violent, unfortunate, and dreadful passion" of love, as Ritson calls it,— it does not fill such a space, in the good song-writing of any country, as a proportion of fifteen to eleven, against all other species. I say of good songwriting, for I know of namby-pamby, it fills nine parts out of ten.

Afterwards Mrs Barbauld.

And precisely of namby-pamby are composed nine parts out of ten of Ritson's most pedantic divisions into classes-classes sillily planned at first, and not clearly distinguished in execution afterwards. The second song of the first class, by Miss* Aiken, concludes with this verse

"Thus to the rising god of day Their early vows the Persians pay,

And bless the spreading fire: Whose glowing chariot mounting soon, Pours on their heads the burning noon, They sicken and expire."

This is not song-writing-it is only a bombastic repetition of a middling thought, which had been already expressed ten thousand times. It is, in short, a verse out of a poor ode, in the modern sense of the word.

In Otway's song, p. 4.

She died a very short time ago.

1825.

ODoherty on English Songs.

"To sigh and wish is all my ease,
Sighs which do heat impart
Enough to melt the coldest ice,

Yet cannot warm your heart." Is this verse worth printing?—this frigid, trivial conceit, which has been tossed about by the verse-writers of all the nations in the world?

In the same page sings Viscount Molesworth,

"Almeria's face, her shape, her air, With charms resistless wound the heart,”

which, it is needless to say, is rhymed by "dart."

"To

In short, of the eighty-four songs of the first class, with the exception of "Take, O take those lips away! all ye ladies now at land,"-" My time, O ye Muses, was happily spent," which, though far too long for a song, contains many ideas and lines perfectly adapted for that style of composition -and perhaps half-a-dozen others, all are of the same cast; and, what makes it more provoking, we see affixed to some of them the names of Dryden, Prior, &c. as if the editor had a perverse pleasure in showing us that these men could write as tritely and trivially as their neighbours on some occaColin and Lucy, and Jemmy Dawson, which this class contains, are no more songs than Chevy Chace, or the Children of the Wood.

sions.

The second class, in which " love is treated as a passion," is better; for even attempts at writing in the language of passion are generally at least readable, if they are often absurd. What we cannnot tolerate is inanity. There is a kind of noisy gallantry

about

"Ask me not how calmly I All the cares of life defy; How I baffle human woes, Woman, woman, woman knows," which is pleasant. Song XII. is excellent; compare the very sound of

"Over the mountains,

And over the waves,
Under the fountains,

And under the graves,

Under floods that are deepest
Which Neptune obey,

Over rocks which are steepest,

Love will find out his way," &c. with the trim nothingness of the very

next

"Oft on the troubled ocean's face,

Loud stormy winds arise,
The murmuring surges swell apace,

And clouds obscure the skies:"

But when the tempests' rage is o'er-
what follows? Why,

"Soft breezes smooth the main,

The billows cease to lash the shore,
And all is calm again!!"
Compare, again, song XXII.
"Would you choose a wife for a happy life,
Leave the court, and the country take,
Moll,
Where Susan and Doll, and Hanny and

Follow Harry and John, whilst harvest

goes on,

And merrily merrily rake," &c. with song XXIV.,

"Happy the world in that blest age

When beauty was not bought and sold, When the fair mind was uninflamed With the mean thirst of baneful gold."

What jejune trash! and how absurd and abominable an attempt it is to put into this creeping dialect what we have read in Greek all but divine, and in Italian almost as delicious as Greek! I say, compare such passages as these together, and if you be not thoroughly sensible of the vast inferiority of the songs by persons of quality, and the propriety of utterly ejecting them from collections of songs, you will be fit to comment on them in the style of Gilbert Wakefield, and to receive panegyrics accordingly from Tom Dibdin.*

I shall first quote a song by AnWhat is written above of English Songs, will, of course, apply to the songs of all nations. I shall give a specimen in French. toine Ferrand, [a Parisian, a Counsellor of the Court of Aids, who died in 1719.Anth. Fran, vol. I. p. 117.]

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Est moins fraiche et moins belle,

Qu' elle :

Venus même n'a pas

Tant d'amours qui marchent sur ses pas,

&c.

3 R

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