Than Jaques, sighing in the forest green.'
Maginn had, if we may judge from appearances, higher poetic instincts than Barham; his 'Homeric Ballads' are a very remarkable contribution to the literature of Homeric translation; but he unwisely expended himself upon periodical writing, and has left nothing behind him worthy of his powers. It is, we think, a subject for congratulation, that the cheap magazines of the day are so anxious to please the populace, that a first-rate writer has absolutely no chance with them, and is obliged to do work worthier of him. The shilling magazine has to suit the taste of the railway reader, who wants to be amused during the hour in which Great Western or Great Northern accepts him as a parcel to be delivered at a friend's house by dinner-time. How this is done we need not say, as anybody who likes to expend a shilling can judge for himself; but it is so done as to render it absurd for men of the calibre of Barham and Maginn to write for the majority of these magazines. This we take to be an advantage. Such men are obliged to work harder—and better.
Another instance of a man with something nobler in him and better than he ever gave the world, or even his friends, is Theodore Hook. Until his private diary came into the hands of those who knew him best, they had no knowledge of the depths of passionate remorse for a wasted life which lay beneath the too brilliant surface of his character. 'In every page,' wrote Lockhart,
'We trace the disastrous influence of both the grand original errors perpetually crossing and blackening the picture of superficial gaiety—indications, not to be mistaken, of a conscience ill at ease; of painful recollections and dark anticipations rising irrepressibly, not to be commanded down; of good, gentle, generous feelings, converted by stings and dartings of remorse into agonies of torture. If we were to choose a motto for this long line of volumes, it would be a maxim so familiar to himself, that it is repeated over and over in his tales of fiction—hardly omitted in any one of them—"Wrong never comes right."'
Theodore Hook laboured under the double disadvantage of an irremovable load of debt, and of an illicit connection which effectually prevented his marrying a woman who might have directed his marvellous powers into their true channel. The consequence was that he lived a false factitious life; worked terribly hard to produce income necessary for him to meet wealthy peers on apparently equal terms; was always pestered by money-lenders; yet all the while his daring spirit maintained an external gaiety unquenchable. At the very time when his spirit seemed highest, when his wit was memorably brilliant, when at club or country house he was amazing every one by his victorious vivacity, there occur in his diary entries that show a broken spirit, a wounded heart, an infinite regret for the past and despair of the future. Such was the inner condition of a man whose conversation had such unique sparkle, that men dined at the Athenæum for the chance of being allowed to draw their chairs to his little table in a favourite corner (Temperance Corner) after dinner—so that the diners at that club fell off more than 300 a year after his disappearance from his wonted seat.
It is unfortunate that the early career of men of letters is often turned awry by the well-meant interference of their relations. A boy of genius, who happens to appear in the midst of a steady, stolid, respectable family, is usually regarded as a 'black sheep.' They try to make him work in some regular groove, and, of course, he fails. If they are very determined, he quarrels with them, and then, too often, he runs headlong into debt, or love, or both, and burdens himself in such a way that he has to toil for freedom through the best years of his life, and possibly never emancipates himself. Of course, it is always hard to say whether the young gentleman is right who fancies himself a genius. Dr. Holmes, in his latest novel, has a capital sketch of a young poetaster who 'eventuates' behind the counter of a store. Such youths require Darwinian compression; but there are just a few of higher mould, with the irrepressible vocation for pen and ink which nothing can cure, who would do better if some way could be devised to give them a chance in literature. Perhaps when the school boards have leisure to consider the subject, they will try to discover a way of developing those latent powers, mathematical as well as poetical, which often exist in regions wholly unexpected. Inspectors of schools might be directed, after they have registered the triumphs of the clever boys, to investigate the habits of the stupid ones. A great poet or mathematician is almost certain to seem stupid in his boyhood.
It may appear that we have tried the 'Ingoldsby Legends' by too high a test; and, indeed, it is a very unpretentious production. Its originator was wholly modest, and did not dream of placing himself in the foremost seats of the literary amphitheatre. He knew the true value of his invention. It is designed for those who would rather laugh than think. It may amuse children at any rate, and there are certain fortunate folk who, to the end of their lives, can be children now and then—can listen to merry rhyming, can believe for the moment that in Fairyland there are mock turtles and March hares, that the dogs there have no ears because the dog's ears have been used up on the little boys' Latin grammars, and the sheep no eyes because the little girls have used up all their sheep's eyes in looking at their sweethearts; can imagine that in Ghostland one may dine comfortably with one's doppelganger. There are times—'weird winter nights,' as Shelley calls them, warmed with merriment, and joyous summer days in which the nightingale seems ebrious with ozone—when there is a necessity for nonsense of one sort or another. It is this necessity which Ingoldsby and his followers supply. Possibly some good is effected by the fact that the occupants of lofty positions have deigned to play with these toys; that the occupants of deaneries and canonries (ecclesiastic port-wineries, if we may venture to coin a phrase) have found in such matters Attic salt for their filberts.
Apropos of Ghostland, just named, Barham was a great lover of spectral stories, and the reader who cares about such will find in his memoir some of the best we have ever seen. As to anecdotes, the book is brimming over with them. Of course, one meets with one or two that have been met before; but an old story, like an old friend or an old coat, is sometimes more enjoyable than a new one. Barham was at Paul's School with some men as well known as himself, among them being Sir Frederick Pollock, Nestor of lawyers, and Richard Bentley, Nestor of publishers. Another of his comrades was Charles Diggle, afterwards Governor of Sandhurst College. Of him and Barham we find a good story:—
'The two boys having in the course of one of their walks discovered a Quaker's meeting-house, forthwith procured a penny tart of a neighbouring pastry-cook; furnished with this, Diggle marched boldly into the building, and holding up the delicacy in the midst of the grave assembly said, with perfect solemnity,
'"Whoever speaks first shall have this pie."