LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
The Two Americas: An Account of Sport and Travel, with Notes on Men and Manners, in North and South America. By Major Sir Rose Lambart Price, Bart. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.
It would hardly be inferred from such a title that the duodecimo in large print which assumes to discuss the New World is occupied with the diary of a tour in a gunboat from Rio de Janeiro through Magellan's Straits and up the west coast of South America to San Diego, and thence by stage and railway to San Francisco, Salt Lake and Chicago. An exploration of this character could not be exhaustive, and the successors of the gallant major will find an abundance of matter left in the twin continents for much larger books with much smaller titles.
It must be said, in justice to the writer, that the pretentiousness of his book is only skin-deep. It "thunders in the index," but disappears after the front page. He makes no claim to profundity, and is satisfied to be an authority among Nimrods rather than with statesmen and philosophers. The rod and gun suit his hand better than the pen, and he takes not the least trouble to disguise the fact. Style is the very least of his cares: we should almost judge, indeed, that he likes to parade his contempt for it. The pronoun who he constantly applies to animals, from a sheep to a shellfish. Of the Uruguayan thistles he notes: "The abundance of this weed was quite surprising, and consisted chiefly of two kinds." The gentleman of color he invariably mentions as a nigger—a word as strange to ears polite in America, and perhaps as natural to them in England, as nasty. He plucks at Sir G. Wolseley's laurels won in "licking a few miserable niggers in Ashantee."
But literary vanities can be despised by a man who drops a prong-horned antelope at one thousand and ninety yards; overtakes by swimming, and captures, a turtle in mid-ocean; finishes with a single ball a grizzly who had put to flight the settlers of half a county in Idaho; stalks a guanaco in Patagonia nine feet high to the top of the head; and catches in one day's fishing, "the only day I really worked hard, twenty-seven California salmon, weighing three hundred and twenty-four pounds." The majesty of the facts utterly overshadows any little blemishes in the method of stating them. Truth so grand might well afford to present itself quite naked, as Truth poetically does—much more somewhat defective in the cut of its garments.
Sir Rose Price is a cosmopolitan sportsman, having hunted the jungles of India, the swamps of Eastern Africa and China, the fjelds of Norway, and most other fields of "mimic war." As usual with persons of that taste, he enjoys perfect health, and, like most persons who know that great blessing, he is full of bonhommie and looks on the rosy side of things. Mosquitoes he dislikes: he denounces also the modern Peruvians. But his chief bitterness is reserved for the unhappy gunboat, the Rocket, which took eight months to get him to San Diego, and spent half an hour in turning round. Whether or not that particular segment of England's wooden walls was built in the eclipse, no reader of Sir Rose's book will doubt that she is rigged with curses dark. When he leaves her a cloud seems to be lifted from his soul. Everything thereafter is delightful, if we except the climate of San Francisco, which he abominates as windy and extreme in its daily changes, and the social system which prevails under Brigham Young. The "big trees" transport him; the California stage-drivers are unapproachable in the world; the officers of the United States army treat him with the most assiduous and unvaried courtesy and hospitality; the ladies of both coasts of the United States are unrivaled for beauty; and "the more one sees of America, both of people and country, the better one likes both." He sums up in the following climax: "Should any visit America after reading these lines, let me advise them to pay particular attention to three subjects—i. e., canvas-back ducks, terrapin and madeira. This to the uninitiated is a hint worth remembering." The last word, we take it, refers to the wine of that name, which we had thought was still in process of very slow recovery from the eclipse of twenty-five years ago. The major, however, knows wine, and speaks impartially of it. The wines of California he damns unreservedly: the Californians themselves, he says, never drink them.
Sir Rose Price became intimate with the brave and unfortunate Custer. He was to have joined that officer on the expedition which terminated so fatally. His "traps were packed" and he was ready to start, when, as he states it, a singular train of untoward events interposed and saved his scalp. Secretary Belknap was impeached—General Custer was summoned to Washington and gave testimony unfavorable to the accused. General Grant's alleged disgust thereat caused Custer to be deprived of independent command and the power of appointing a staff. Hence The Two Americas and one scalp less at the belt of Sitting Bull.
Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall): An Autobiographical Fragment and Biographical Notes; with Personal Sketches of Contemporaries, Unpublished Lyrics, and Letters of Literary Friends. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
Neither the biographer nor the critic finds it easy to get a good grip on a personal or literary career so little marked by salient features as that of Procter. The lives of few individuals have rolled on more evenly than his did for the round eighty years which made its term. Not of high or of low birth, rich or poor, feeble or vigorous in health, a man of the world or a recluse, ardent or cold in emotions, his figure is strangely wanting in light and shade. As a poet and a thinker his character is equally evasive. His verse can rarely be pronounced decidedly feeble or commonplace, and never lofty or thrilling. He will be remembered by two or three short poems tender in fancy and soft in finish. Inquirers who are tempted by these to explore the rest of his productions will find them readable, but not memorable, and will wonder at learning that a tragedy of Procter's attained a success on the London stage denied to either of Tennyson's.
The poet will go down to posterity under an assumed name, that under which he was almost exclusively known to readers of his own day. Thus buried under an anonym, and gravitating at all points toward mediocrity, it is odd that so much interest should centre in his life and works as we actually find to exist. This interest may be mainly ascribed to his surroundings. Like Rogers, he shines by reflected light. He numbered among his friends or acquaintances, in varied shades of intimacy, almost every celebrity in British literature during two generations. To these were added leading representatives of the fine arts, music and the drama—Mendelssohn, Lawrence, Landseer, Turner, the Kembles, Edmund Kean. It was a notable visiting-list that embraced all the Lake school, Byron, Dickens, Thackeray, the two Lyttons, Scott, Sydney Smith and a number of others as incongruous in time and tenets. Good taste, amiability, the means and disposition to entertain, would have sufficed, with the aid of less of intellectual and imaginative power than Procter possessed, to keep him in good companionship with men like these, who felt the need of a common professional rallying-point in the metropolis. He avoided collision with any of their crotchets and idiosyncrasies. His antipathies were few, and what he had he was generally successful in repressing. De Quincey seems to have been lowest in his estimation. The genial Elia and the fiery Hazlitt divided his especial and lasting attachment.
Procter was always haunted by the very natural impression that he owed to the world some use of the opportunities afforded him for the study of mind and character by such a concourse of leading men. But he failed to make even a move toward the discharge of that task until a short time before the close of his life. The results, slight as they are, form perhaps the most interesting section of the book before us. It embraces short notices of Byron, Rogers, Crabbe, the three chief Lakers, Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, Carlyle, Haydon, Campbell, Moore and a few others. Coleridge, we are told, had a "prodigious amount of miscellaneous reading" always at command, and forgot everything in the pleasure of hearing himself talk when he could secure an audience. Wordsworth's poverty at one period of his life is illustrated by his having been met emerging from a wood with a quantity of hazelnuts which he had gathered to eke out the scanty dinner of his family. Doubtless he had collected finer things than nuts, if less available for material sustenance. Wordsworth, breakfasting with Rogers, excused his being late by saying he had been detained by one of Coleridge's long monologues. He had called so early on Coleridge, he explained, because he was to dine with him that evening. "And," said Rogers, "you wanted to draw the sting out of him beforehand." Campbell was in society cautious, stiff and precise, like much of his verse, but was subject to occasional outbreaks, analogous to the "Battle of the Baltic" and "Ye Mariners of England." Crabbe resembled Moore in his passion for lords. Walter Scott was big, broad, easy and self-poised, like one of his own historical novels. He impressed Procter more than any of the rest as great, and consciously great. Leigh Hunt was "essentially a gentleman;" he "treated all people fairly, yet seldom or never looked up to any one with much respect;" and "his mind was feminine rather than manly, without intending to speak disrespectfully of his intellect."
Part IV. of the book is devoted to selections from letters written to Procter. Jeffrey, Byron, Carlyle and Beddoes are the chief correspondents quoted. Those from Byron are strongly Byronesque, but give us no new points, unless in the high moral tone he assumes in defending Don Juan. That poem does, he avers, no injustice to the English aristocracy, which he maintains to have been at that time the most profligate in Europe. The prominent details of the queen's trial and others like it would "in no other country have been publicly tolerated a moment." Was it Byron's theory, then, that all kinds of morality are merely relative, and the outgrowth of local conditions?
The materials at the command of the editor of this book were obviously very meagre. Yet it has undoubted value. If neither a corner-stone, a voussoir nor a capital, it has at least its place in the edifice which forms the literary history of the nineteenth century. Beyond that value it has merit as the simple record of a life enriched by the charms of poetry and elegant taste and the social and domestic charities.
Turkey. By James Baker, M.A., Lieutenant-Colonel Auxiliary Forces, formerly Eighth Hussars. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
The announcement of this book as "a companion volume to Wallace's Russia" provokes a comparison greatly to its disadvantage. The qualities most conspicuous in Mr. Wallace's work, thoroughness of exposition, skillful arrangement, breadth of view and mastery of details, are wholly wanting in Colonel Baker's Turkey. The information which it gives from the author's personal observation is fragmentary and disappointing; the matter gleaned from other sources is chiefly surplusage; the expressions of opinion indicate positiveness rather than keen insight or impartial judgment; and, what renders the contrast still more striking, the book as evidently owes its dimensions, if not its existence, to the immediate interest of the subject as Mr. Wallace's work was the slowly-ripened fruit of long and patient study, and its opportune appearance a fortuitous advantage that added little to its attractiveness. It is, however, no ground for condemning a book that it has been written to supply information for which there is a present demand; and if Colonel Baker had confined himself to telling us what he knew, and his publishers had refrained from exciting undue expectations, the contribution might have been accepted thankfully for what it was worth, without special complaint in regard to its deficiencies. About half the book is readable, and this includes some portions which, besides being interesting, derive a special value from the author's qualifications for speaking authoritatively on the points discussed in them. He traveled somewhat extensively in Bulgaria; he purchased and cultivated an estate in the neighborhood of Salonica, and was thus brought into those relations of landlord, employer and taxpayer which entail a certain familiarity with the workings of the administrative machinery and with the habits and feelings of the rural population; and, finally, as a soldier, he writes with full comprehension and intelligence on the military resources of the country and the prospects of the war which was seen to be inevitable when his book went to press. In reference to the last point, he even sketches a plan of defence which it seems not improbable may be that which the government will adopt, if its own collapse or the intervention of other powers does not bring the struggle to a speedier termination or an unforeseen issue. He considers the Danube with its defences as offering no obstacle of importance to the overwhelming forces preparing to cross it. The Balkan affords numerous passes which may be traversed at all seasons except in the depth of winter, and no points of defence that may not easily be turned. But after crossing this range the Russians will be more than three hundred miles from their base, and all their supplies will have to be brought over the mountains. Their numbers will have been so diminished by sickness and by the large detachments necessary for masking the fortresses in their rear, that out of the four hundred thousand with which Colonel Baker supposes them to open the campaign, they cannot be expected to operate with more than one hundred thousand south of the Balkan. They will still have a difficult country before them, and from Burgas, on the Black Sea, where Colonel Baker proposes the establishment of an entrenched camp, to be constantly supplied and reinforced by water-transport from Constantinople, their flanks may be harassed and their communications threatened, making it impossible for them to march on Adrianople before ridding themselves of this danger. "It may be argued," says Colonel Baker, "that this plan of defence would be giving over a large portion of the empire to Russian occupation, but the answer is, that Turkey, being in command of the Black Sea, could strangle all Russian commerce in those waters until that power released her grip of the Ottoman throat." But whatever be the merit or the feasibility of this plan, it presupposes not only a design on the part of Russia to advance upon Constantinople, which is doubtful, but a degree of energy in the Turkish government and military commanders which it is almost certain does not exist. The Ottoman power is to all appearance perishing of inanition, and the mere hastening of its dissolution through external shocks is not to be deprecated. But it is puerile to imagine that this will be the only or chief result of the war now going on, if not arrested by intervention in one form or another. In the delicate and complicated relations of the European states the dismemberment of one empire and the aggrandizement of another are not such changes as can occur without affecting the whole system, and that harmony of action which it was found impossible to secure as a means of averting war is not likely to show itself when some decisive catastrophe shall have developed the possibilities to be hoped or apprehended, brought conflicting interests into play and suggested new combinations. Whether a different course, with joint action, on the part of the powers that now affect neutrality would have led to a more satisfactory result, is itself a mere matter of speculation; but out of England few persons will be disposed to agree with Colonel Baker in putting on Russia the whole responsibility both of the war and of the events which are pleaded as the justification of it. While conceding the corruption, apathy and general incompetence of the Turkish government, he contends that oppression is the exception, not the rule, that the chief mischiefs have sprung directly from Russian intrigue, that the country has been making rapid progress in many ways, and that time alone might safely have been trusted to bring about all desirable reforms. So far as the general condition of the people is concerned, his statements are entitled to weight. But beyond the limits of his own experience his boldness in assertion will not incline the reader to accept him as a safe guide. His book would have left a far more favorable impression had he confined himself to the description of what he saw and the relation of his own adventures, leaving Turkish history and political speculations to writers of a different class.
Books Received.
The Music Reader; or, The Practice and Principles of the Art, especially adapted to Vocal Music. For the use of Schools, Classes and Private Instruction. By Leopold Meignen and Wm. W. Keys. Philadelphia: W. H. Boner & Co., Agts.
Standard Facts and Figures; or, What you Do Know! What you Don't Know!! What you Want to Know!!! (Revised and enlarged edition.) Edited by A. G. Sullivan. New York: Morton & Dumont.
The Divine Order of the Universe, as interpreted by Emanuel Swedenborg; with especial relation to Modern Astronomy. By Rev. Augustus Clissold, M. A. London: Longmans, Green & Co.
From Traditional to Rational Faith; or, The Way I came from Baptist to Liberal Christianity. By R. Andrew Griffin. (Town-and-Country Series.) Boston: Roberts Brothers.
The Life, Times and Character of Oliver Cromwell. (Half-Hour Series.) By the Right Honorable E. H. Knatchbull-Hugessen, M. P. New York: Harper & Bros.
How to Teach according to Temperament and Mental Development; or, Phrenology in the School-room and the Family. By Nelson Sizer. New York: S. R. Wells & Co.
Rise of the People and Growth of Parliament, 1215-1485: Epochs of English History. By James Rowley, M. A. (Harper's Half-Hour Series.) New York: Harper & Bros.
Imaginary Conversations. By Walter Savage Landor. (Fourth Series.) Dialogues of Literary Men, of Famous Women, etc. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
Peru: Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas, By E. George Squier, M. A., F. S. A. New York: Harper & Brothers.
A Winter Story. By Miss Peard, author of "The Rose Garden." (Town-and-Country Series.) Boston: Roberts Brothers.
That Lass o' Lowrie's. By Frances Hodgson Burnett. Illustrated by Alfred Fredericks. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.
Shakespeare's Tragedy of Macbeth. Edited, with Notes, by William J. Rolfe, A. M. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Aloys. By B. Auerbach. Translated by Charles T. Brooks. (Leisure-Hour Series.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Steam Injectors: Their Theory and Use. From the French of M. Léon Pochet. New York: D. Van Nostrand.
Academy Sketches, Exhibition of 1877. With Descriptive Notes by "Nemo." New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Miss Nancy's Pilgrimage: A Story of Travel. By Virginia W. Johnson. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Mark Twain's Adhesive Scrap Book. By Samuel L. Clemens. New York: Slote, Woodman & Co.
Transmission of Power by Wire Ropes. By Albert W. Stahl, M. E. New York: D. Van Nostrand.
Dot and Dime. Two Characters in Ebony. By One who Knows all about them. Boston: Loring.
Hours with Men and Books. By William Mathews, LL.D. Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co.
Bessie Lang. By Alice Corkran. (Leisure-Hour Series.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Annual Report of the Chief Signal-Officer for 1876. Washington: Government Printing office.
Will it Be? By Mrs. Helen J. Ford. (Loring's Tales of the Day.) Boston: Loring.
My Lady-Help, and What she Taught me, By Mrs. Warren. Boston: Loring.
A Modern Mephistopheles. (No-Name Series.) Boston: Roberts Brothers.