British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIII / January and April, 1871

by Various

The fourth volume is much more relevant to Mr. Dixon's theme. We could have spared the catalogue of names with which, after the manner of Homer's list of ships, it opens, and which is an amusing instance of the sonorous effects which Mr. Dixon delights to produce; but the volume is, on the whole, satisfactory. The instances are well selected. The dramatic skill with which his heroes are presented is great. The interest is legitimately sustained, and we are really gratified to be able to speak highly of the whole. We cannot follow him in detail. Our sympathies are most interested in the visionary politico-philosopher James Harrington, the author of 'Oceana,' the sorrowful victim of idiotic fears, whose political prevision, Mr. Forster's Ballot Bill, after two centuries, is just about to realize. Mr. Dixon rapidly sketches, as heroes of the Tower, the second Buckingham—the Duke of Richmond, who was guilty of falling in love and eloping with the king's mistress—the Earl of Castlemaine, who connived at the unfaithfulness of his wife, and died a monk—the two Penns—the romantic story of Colonel Blood—the mysterious tragedy of the Earl of Essex—the martyrdom of Lord Russell, and of Algernon Sydney—the execution of the Duke of Monmouth—the lurid tragedy of Judge Jeffreys—the death of Laud—the fate of the Scottish Jacobites—the romantic escape of Lord Nithsdale—the imprisonment of Sir Francis Burdett—and the finis to the prison history of the Tower in the anti-climax of the Cato street conspirators.

We wish Mr. Dixon had treated his really great epical subject with more dignity and with better taste. His powers of picturesque narration and of vivid portraiture are great: is it too late to ask him to employ them upon better themes, and to subdue them to great purposes?

Annals of Oxford. By J. C. Jeafferson. 2 vols. Hurst and Blackett.

There is, perhaps, no subject on which a book of pleasanter and more instructive gossip could be compiled than the English universities. Their origin and early constitution are excessively vague and uncertain, and are therefore a source of perpetual interest to the antiquary. It is known that they came into existence as part of that intellectual revival which is coupled with such names as Anselm and Abelard, and that the first notices of their activity represent them as vigorous institutions. As soon as the colleges, which are special characteristics of English academical history, are founded, information as to the domestic life of these ancient corporations begins, and is continued uninterruptedly to our own time. The materials for the annals of Oxford and Cambridge are copious, and such annals, were the facts carefully selected and well arranged, would be an exceedingly valuable addition to the social history of this country. Few people, for example, are aware of the very important part which Oxford played in the incipient reformation of Wyckliffe in the fourteenth, and in the revival of tithes under Erasmus, More, and Colet at the conclusion of the fifteenth, centuries; or of the refuge which both Universities, but especially Cambridge, afforded to the leaders of Puritanism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nor are there many persons who are alive to the fact that the legislation of the Restoration, which tied both these great institutions down to a political system, under which the Established Church was made the slave of the State and the gaoler of the mind, degraded and demoralized both Oxford and Cambridge.

Mr. C. Jeafferson has some pretensions to the reputation of a good gossip. He has compiled certain amusing books about the professions of law, physic, and divinity. In an evil hour he was tempted to risk this reputation, and to write a book about Oxford. He has succeeded in producing one of the worst specimens of book-making which has ever been put before the public. To call these two volumes the 'Annals of Oxford' is a gross abuse of words, for they are not annals in any sense whatever. A few facts are culled from very familiar authors, such as Anthony Wood and Gutch, and are diluted with a prodigality of verbiage to which no experience of ours can find a parallel. The most important parts of academical history are omitted, as for example the contest between the University and the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which Oxford supported Wyckliffe against prelate and pope, and succumbed only when she was threatened with the loss of her franchises. The reader is treated to an account of the origin of the University, for which there is neither authority nor probability, for throughout the two volumes the author is utterly without any information of what the University has been or is, notwithstanding his boast that he 'knows nearly everything about Oxford in the dark ages.'

But the most serious offence which the book commits is not its omission of important facts, or its intolerable dilution of unimportant ones, or its misapprehension of the whole subject, but its incessant vulgarity. There is hardly a page in the two volumes where we do not find examples of that slangy familiarity of expression which passes with some people for wit or humour, and which in pretending to avoid dulness is the dullest of all sins against good taste. Mr. C. Jeafferson's contribution to the history of Oxford is wholly without value, and for the sake of the writer's reputation as a collector of gossip and anecdote, the kindest wish which a reviewer can make him is that the 'Annals of Oxford' may be speedily forgotten.

The Life of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Civil Engineer. By Isambard Brunel, B.C.L. Longmans. 1870. pp. 568.

Very few men in the history of the world have at the same time said so little and done so much as Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He was eminently the worker as distinguished from the talker. Not that he had, as was the case with the illustrious Hunter, a difficulty as to expressing his thoughts in appropriate language. His mode of expression, on the rare occasions when he did speak, was pointed and happy. His reports and professional correspondence were models of clear perspicuous terseness. But he felt that his works were the true witnesses as to his character; and to their silent and enduring testimony he was content to commit his fame. Though he was made as often as any public man of his day the object of frequent and unsparing attack, he rarely offered any verbal reply, restrained by that proper pride in his own profession which forbade him to appear before the irresponsible and uneducated tribunal of the political press.

What those works were on which rests a reputation that will increase while the fame of many others fades and disappears, his son, in a modest volume, brings briefly to the notice of the public. There is evidence that Mr. Isambard Brunel has been a pupil in his father's school. He has confined his work within limits only too narrow for the actual magnitude of the subject. Very often, by the simple form of abstracted chronicle which he uses, as in describing the launch of the Great Eastern, he does more to silence slander and to terminate controversy, than could have been effected by the most eloquent advocacy. Still, we could wish he had allowed his pen fuller scope. We should like to have heard more of the inner life of so remarkable a man, to have had the taste gratified by illustrations of his refined and graceful fancy, and to have had the magnitude of his works brought into fuller relief by a more minute description of his unsleeping toil, his unflagging and audacious originality, and his conscientious effort to bring all his designs and every detail of their execution to the sternest test.

It is easy for those who have a mere newspaper acquaintance with Mr. Brunel to sneer at the education attained by the engineer at the expense of his shareholders. At the commencement of the railway system in this country something of the kind was inevitable in the case of every leading engineer. The great features on which the success of the railway system mainly hinged were not arrived at by scientific deduction. The speed which George Stephenson estimated at sixteen miles an hour—viz., the velocity attained by some of the most rapid coaches of the period—was raised to from twenty to thirty miles an hour, in the first instance, by Captain Ericsson (the inventor of the Monitor), in conjunction with the late Mr. John Braithwaite. During the experimental trials on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the Novelty, the engine built by these engineers, passed by the Rocket, that of the Messrs. Stephenson, like a shot. The ill-constructed four-wheel engines of Mr. Bary, with which the London and Birmingham line was opened, were constructed for a moderate rate of speed. From those which, of his own design, Mr. Brunel put on the Great Western Railway, he obtained a speed equal to that of the flight of the swallow—from sixty to seventy miles an hour. A level portion of line between London and Slough was daily traversed by the express trains at this high speed.