Thomas Cooper, a well-known English Chartist, distinguished by the inviting prestige, "Author of the 'Purgatory of Suicides,'" advertises to deliver his orations on the genius of all men, from Shakspeare to George Fox the Quaker, Milton to Mohammed, and on many subjects from astronomy to civil war, at the low charge of (to working men) two pounds per speech, or at thirty shillings each for a quantity.
Thackeray is writing a novel in three volumes, to be published in the winter. The scene is in England early in the eighteenth century, and the stage will be crossed by many of the illustrious actors of that time—such as Bolingbroke, Swift, and Pope; and Dick Steele will play a prominent part.
"There is more than a bit of gossip," says The Leader "in the foregoing paragraph. It intimates that Thackeray has 'risen above the mist;' he will no more be hampered and seduced by the obstacles and temptations coextensive with the fragmentary composition of monthly parts. It intimates that he has the noble ambition of producing a work of art. It also intimates that he has bidden adieu, for the present, to Gaunt-house, the Clubs, Pall-mall, and May-fair—to forms of life which are so vividly, so wondrously reproduced in his pages, that detractors have asserted he could paint nothing else—forgetting that creative power to that degree can not be restricted to one form. His Lectures have prepared us for a very vivid and a very charming picture of the Eighteenth Century."
The Master of the Rolls has given a favorable answer to the memorial presented to him by Lord Mahon and various literary men, praying for the admission of historical writers to the free use of the records. On this, the London Examiner remarks, "There is a point of view in which this matter is most important. The concession throws a vast amount of new responsibility upon literary men. Henceforth the guess-work, the mere romance-writing, which we have been too long accustomed to suppose to be history, will be without excuse. Writers who neglect to take advantage of record-evidence on all subjects to which it is applicable, will lay themselves open to the sharpest and justest critical censure. Our history may now be put upon the strong foundation, not of borrowed evidence, but of the records themselves. If literary men neglect this opportunity, the Government will be no longer to blame. The Master of the Rolls has cleared his conscience, and that of the State. But we have no fear that such will be the result. Wise and liberal concession, like that of the Master of the Rolls, must tell with honorable effect both upon our literary men and upon our national character."
The following ludicrous remarks, are from an article in the London Spectator on Parkman's History of Pontiac. They are a specimen of what a certain class of English writers call criticism. The obtuseness of John Bull can no farther go.
"It is remarked by travelers, that however individual Americans may differ—as the observing shepherd can detect physiognomical differences in his flock—there is a general resemblance throughout the Union in lathy lankiness, in haste, in tobacco-chewing, in dress, in manners or (as Scott expressed it) 'no manners.' The remark may be truly applied to American books. Poetry and travels with hardly an exception, historical novels and tales without any exception, and works on or about history, have a certain family likeness. As one star differs from another in brightness, and yet they are all stars, so one American writer on history differs from another in point of merit, yet their kind of merit is alike. Washington Irving's mode of composition is the type of them all, and consists in making the most of things. The landscape is described, not to possess the reader with the features of the country so far as they are essential to the due apprehension of the historical event, but as a thing important in itself, and sometimes as a thing adapted to show off the writing or the writer. The costumes are not only indicated, to remind the reader of the various people engaged, but dwelt upon with the unction of a virtuoso. The march is narrated in detail; the accessories are described in their minutiæ; and the probable or possible feelings of the actors are laid before the reader. Sometimes this mode of composition is used sparingly and chastely, as by Bancroft; sometimes more fully, as by Theodore Irving in his Conquest of Florida; other styles (in the sense of expressing ideas) than the model may also preponderate, so as to suggest no idea of the author of the Sketch Book and the Conquest of Granada; but, more or less, the literary sketcher or tale-writer has encroached upon the province of the historian."
The London journals announce that Carlyle's Memoirs of John Stirling will be issued immediately.