Our clay, the preachers say, was warmed to life;
But yours, your dull, cold mud, was froze to being.
I would not be the oyster that you are
For all the pearls of wisdom in your shell!
All the persons of the play are vivid and life-like. With the beginning of the third act the interest becomes intense, and nothing could be more vigorous and touching than the action and depth of pathos toward the close of the piece. Every page teems with fine thoughts and images, which lead us to believe that the mine from which this book is a specimen, contains a golden vein of poetry which will go far to enrich our native literature.
Literary Sketches and Letters: Being the Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, Never before Published. By Thomas Noon Talfourd. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.
The present work is important in more respects than one. It was needed to clear up the obscurity which rested on several points of Lamb's life, and it was needed to account for some of the peculiarities of his character. The volume proves that this most genial and kindly of humorists was tried by as severe a calamity as ever broke down the energies of a great spirit, and the frailties commonly associated with his name seem almost as nothing compared with the stern duties he performed from his early manhood to his death. The present volume is calculated to increase that personal sympathy and love for him, which has ever distinguished the readers of Lamb from the readers of other authors, and also to add a sentiment of profound respect for his virtues and his fortitude. The truth is that Lamb's intellect was one of the largest and strongest, as well as one of the finest, among the great contemporary authors of his time, and it was altogether owing to circumstances, and those of a peculiarly calamitous character, that this ample mind left but inadequate testimonials of its power and fertility. He is, and probably will be, chiefly known as an original and somewhat whimsical essayist, but his essays, inimitable of their kind, were but the playthings of his intellect.
Talfourd has performed his editorial duties with his usual taste and judgment, and with all that sweetness and grace of expression which ever distinguishes the author of Ion. His sketches of Lamb's companions are additions to the literary history of the present century. Lamb's own letters, which constitute the peculiar charm of the book, are admirable—the serious ones being vivid transcripts of his moods of mind, and some of them almost painful in their direct expression of agony, and the semi-serious rioting in mirth, mischief and whim, full of wit and meaning, and full also of character and kindliness. One of his early letters he closes, as being from his correspondent's "afflicted, headachey, sore-throatey, humble servant." In another he calls Hoole's translation of Tasso "more vapid than smallest small beer, 'sun-vinegared.'" In speaking of Hazlitt's intention to print a political pamphlet at his own expense, he comes out with a general maxim, which has found many disciples: "The first duty of an author, I take it, is never to pay any thing." When Hannah More's Cœlebs in Search of a Wife appeared, it was lent to him by a precise lady to read. He thought it among the poorest of common novels, and returned it with this stanza written in the beginning:
If ever I marry a wife
I'd marry a landlord's daughter,
For then I may sit in the bar,
And drink cold brandy-and-water.
In speaking of his troubles toward the close of his life, he has a strange, humorous imagination, in every way worthy of his peculiar genius: "My bedfellows are cough and cramp; we sleep three in a bed."
The present volume is elegantly printed, and will doubtless have a run. It is full of matter, and that of the most interesting kind. No reader of Lamb, especially, will be without it.
Modern French Literature. By L. Raymond de Vericour. Edited by W. S. Chase, A. M. Boston: Gould, Kendall & Lincoln. 1 vol. 12mo.
This work is the English production of a native Frenchman, and was written for one of Chambers's series of books for the people. It is edited, with notes alluding particularly to writers prominent in the late French Revolution, by a young American scholar, who has recently resided in France. The book, though deficient and sometimes incorrect in details, deserves much praise for its general correctness and accuracy. The author, though by no means a critic of the first class, is altogether above the herd of Grub street hacks who commonly undertake the popularizing of literary history. He is no Winstansley and no Cibber. The range of his reading appears to be extensive. His judgments are somewhat those of a school-master, but one of the highest grade. There are several amusing errors relating to the position of English authors, to some of which we cannot help alluding, as they seem to have escaped the vigilant eye of the editor. Speaking of Guizot and Sismondi as the leaders of the school of French philosophical historians, he remarks that "the English language possesses some good specimens of this class of history; the most remarkable are Gibbon's Decline and Fall and the works of Mr. Millar." This is as if the author had said that England possessed some good specimens of the Romantic Drama, the most remarkable being Shakspeare's Macbeth and the works of Mr. Colman.