Walks in Rome. Two vols. By Augustus J. C. Hare. Strahan and Co.
This is only a guide-book, but it is one of a very superior description. As Rome is to all cities, so is this guide-book to all other guide-books. Fully informed with the spirit of the past, and yet not wanting in the facts of the present, it is at once an historical monitor and a topographical companion. The poetry and sentiment and delicate observation of various writers, bred of cultured gazing upon the ruins which almost make twenty centuries synchronous, have been carefully gathered together; but the requirements of the mere sightseer have not been forgotten. The volumes are full of useful information. We should think that only those to whom Rome is familiar with more than the familiarity of a natal city could afford to dispense with them.
POETRY, FICTION, AND BELLES LETTRES.
The Works of Alexander Pope. New Edition, including several hundred Unpublished Letters and other new Material, collected in part by the late Right Honourable John Wilson Croker. With Introduction and Notes by Rev. Whitwell Elwin. Vols. 1, 2, and 6. Murray. 1871.
Two things are evident on the most cursory inspection of Mr. Elwin's work; first, that he has spared no pains in probing every corner of a most complicated story; secondly, that he finds a pleasure in making the case against Pope look as black as it possibly can be made. In a long and minute investigation of the circumstances attending the publication of the successive volumes of Pope's letters, he exposes the petty trickery and vanity of the poet. We are ashamed of Pope as we read this merciless exposure. But we are somewhat relieved when we recollect that after all these frauds and concealments there was nothing to gain by it. Like the magpie hiding a silver spoon, Pope took nothing by his trickery but the pleasure of deceiving. He could not help doing as he did. Whether from his Catholic education, or from whatever cause, he had contracted a dishonest habit of mind, which came out in all his dealings. But Mr. Elwin gets so heated with the chase after Pope's stratagems, that he discovers them even where they do not exist. When he sets up the theory that the 'Essay on Man' was a treatise of infidelity palmed off on the public under the disguise of a vindication of optimism, he overshoots the mark.
So far three volumes of the edition are before us—two of the poems, and one of the correspondence. We hope in some early number to devote an article to an examination of Mr. Elwin's editorial work.
Napoleon Fallen. A Lyrical Drama. By Robert Buchanan. Strahan and Co.
Mr. Buchanan is a brilliant improvisatore, and could doubtless produce dramas and epics to order on any subject to which the revolutionary mind is akin. We do not doubt the genuineness of his lyrical passion; it is white-hot and screaming, but it seems as if it were easy to kindle, not quite rational in its foundation, and certainly not classical in its expression. As a rhymed pamphlet, special-pleading a cause, and echoing the cries of the hour, 'Napoleon Fallen' is unquestionably powerful; as a dramatic representation of events in the shape in which they will descend to history, it is too violent to be true. It was a happy device to incorporate the Athenian chorus with the modern drama; the expedient provided expression for the eager feelings with which the world witnessed the stupendous struggle. But to import into the statuesque forms of poetry the frantic passion and inarticulate rage of the vanquished, in their naked amorphous violence, removes the poem out of the sphere of art. If the representation of a thing is meant to be permanent, the thing itself must be not only real, but also permanent in its nature. Lessing laid down this canon, and one would have thought that it was now established. But if 'Napoleon Fallen' is not perfect as a poem, there is very much fine poetry in it. The lyrical fire which an age in travail with revolutions produces is perhaps not rare in our days; Mr. Buchanan unquestionably possesses it. He also possesses that belief and faith without which no man has a right to sing at all—belief in the divine end of human life, and faith in the future. With poetic indefiniteness it is rather an aspiration than an articulated creed, but he is at least no emasculated Pagan. His dramatic power is less obvious, and perhaps it is only the dramatism of the lyrist—the mere modulation of passion into a different key.
King Arthur. By Edward Bulwer (Lord Lytton.) Tucker.