We think that this pamphlet, though its notions are pushed to a crazy extreme, is calculated to do good. In attacking the existence of legislative assemblies, it lays bare and mercilessly ridicules their abuses, especially their tendency to endless and worthless talk and palaver. The style is not that which Carlyle is accustomed to use in his library, but the style of Carlyle over his brandy and water; and it accordingly has the recklessness as well as the fire of that peculiar method of accelerating the faculties. The Parliament which Carlyle likes, and which he contrasts with Lord John’s, is an old Norman one, before the business of Parliament had been undertaken by the newspapers; a Parliament which advised, not a Parliament which governed. “Reading,” he says, “in Eadmerus and the dim old Books, one finds gradually that the Parliament was at first a most simple Assemblage, quite cognate to the situation; that Red William, or whoever had taken upon him the terrible task of being King of England, was wont to invite, oftenest about Christmas time, his subordinate Kinglets, Barons, as he called them, to give him the pleasure of their company for a week or two; there, in earnest conference all morning, in freer talk over Christmas cheer all evening, in some big royal Hall of Westminster, Winchester, or wherever it might be, with log-fires, huge rounds of roast and boiled, not lacking Malmsey and other generous liquor, they took counsel concerning the arduous matters of the kingdom. ‘You, Taillebois what have you to propose in this arduous matter. . . Tête-d’étoupes, speak out. And first the pleasure of a glass of wine, my infant!’ Thus, for a fortnight’s space, they carried on, after a human manner, their grand National Consult, or Parliamentum; intermingling Dinner with it (as is still the modern method;) debuting every thing as Tacitus describes the Ancient Germans to have done, two times; once sober, and once what he calls ‘drunk’—not exactly dead-drunk, but jolly round their big table; that so both sides of the matter might be seen, and, midway between rash hope and unreasonable apprehension, the true decision of it might be hit.”
Throughout the pamphlet the author wantons in dogmatism and impertinence, and has an especial love for a phrase representing the British people as “twenty-seven millions mostly fools.” The United States comes in as usual for a rap. The rumor is, that we are indebted for all Carlyle’s sarcasms against our people to the American tourists who have bored him; persons whom he always treated with roughness, but whom he now receives with almost savage insolence. We have heard a story of an American lady, who visited him—under the impression that he was a great philanthropist, and immediately opened the conversation with some remarks in favor of the abolition of slavery. He growled out a bitter rejoinder, in which he took strong grounds in favor of that institution, and denounced all abolitionists as sentimental fools and flunkies. The lady, irritated and surprised, hit instantly on the true woman’s method, the argumentum ad hominum, and put the startling question, “How, Mr. Carlyle, should you like to be a slave?” He dilated his person to its full dimensions, and in his broad Scotch brogue exclaimed, “Well, I should be glad to be a great bull-necked nigger, and have somebody to take care of me!” We must confess to a sympathy with his wish, as far as it relates to somebody’s taking care of him, we think good might be done to his head in an asylum.
There is, however, an allusion in the pamphlet to our Congress, which is not without its wisdom just at this time, and which may be safely commended to the attention of those honorable members who consume time and money, precious to the public, in speeches which rarely rise in thought to the level of party newspaper leaders, and which, in style, are often below the rhetoric of romances in yellow covers. He says, “Only perhaps in the United States, which alone of all countries can do without governing—every man being at least able to live, and move off into the wilderness, let Congress jargon as it will—can such a form of so-called ‘Government’ continue for any length of time to torment men with the semblance, when the indispensable substance is not there. For America, as the citizens well know, is an ‘unparalelled country’—with mud soil enough, and fierce sun enough in the Mississippi valley alone to grow Indian corn for the extant Posterity of Adam at this time; what other country ever stood in such a case? ‘Speeches to Bunkum,’ and a constitutional battle of the Kilkenny cats, which in other countries are becoming tragical and unendurable, may there still fall under the comical category.”
Webster’s Dictionary.—A new quarto edition of Webster’s Dictionary, with additions by Professor Goodrich, has recently been issued by G. & C. Merriam, of Springfield, and is for sale in this city by booksellers generally. Study of the Dictionary is the great want of a majority of American writers. They neither drink at the sources nor draw from the depths of the language, to supply the thirst for purity, variety, and force of expression, with which truly masculine minds are panting. With a vocabulary equal to the largest demands of truth in its labors, or of imagination in its play, we find constantly recurring the same set-phrases, the same commonplaces, the same worn-out figures. Our college-bred men are not deficient in a Johnsonian stock of Latin derivatives, but into the Saxon mine of our tongue, few of them have ever delved. They are too indolent to open the record and search for the treasures bequeathed to them. Until Webster’s researches and toils brought these treasures together, they were so far hidden and scattered, that few even of the learned appreciated their amount. Thirty-five years he spent in the compilation of his Dictionary; and since the publication of the first edition, it has been enriched by himself and the present editor with thousands of words; and it is now, by the consent of the learned in England as well as this country, valuable above every other, for comprehensiveness, etymological accuracy, and clearness of verbal definitions. The new quarto contains the whole matter of the former editions in two volumes, printed with clear type, on good paper, and substantially bound. It is one of the few books, of which a threadbare recommendation may be truly repeated—“no library is complete without it.” One of the most distinguished of American writers, whose choice of fresh and forceful words has at times brought upon him a charge of pedantry, but who in fact has only used fearlessly the wealth of the language, told us, some years ago, that it was his habit to read the Dictionary through about once every year. To the student, this practice may be commended as of inestimable service. A single word is often the cue to a sentiment or a train of ideas worthy of expression. As the mind is full of words to give variety to its pictures, so will it be full of suggestions for new subjects. The relation between words and ideas is to a degree an absolute identity. An illiterate person sits down to write a letter. His fund of language being small, the paucity of his thoughts is in the same proportion. He may have traveled half over the world, yet he has nothing to say to his friends at home, except that he is well, and hopes they are the same. Our young writers may find in this illustration a reason for studying the Dictionary faithfully and continually. Not from the conversation of the educated, or from miscellaneous books alone, will they catch by accident the riches of the language. They must search and reflect—a task which the labors of Webster and his great predecessors in lexicography, have reduced to child’s play. Among the two or three thousand newspapers in the United States, are at least some hundreds edited by men who have not had the opportunities of a classical education. Minds only of extraordinary energy, or those rising to the standard of genius, can do perfect justice to the important duties of journalism without the advantages of this discipline. But they may in mature life, find its best substitute in the systematic study of a comprehensive Dictionary, in connection with the classics of the language. Were this method adopted, we would not so often have reason to blush for the feebleness and illiteracy exhibited not only in many newspaper columns, but in the pages of periodicals of far higher pretensions, as exemplars of rhetorical propriety.
The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith. Including a Variety of Pieces now first collected. By James Prior. New York: George P. Putnam. 4 vols. 12mo.
Few English classics have been edited with the care and the thoroughness of this edition of Goldsmith. Prior, an antiquarian who never touches a subject which he does not exhaust, has paid especial attention to Goldsmith; has written a biography of him, which forms the basis both of Foster’s and Irving’s; and in the present edition, has printed many valuable essays and poems never before collected. The articles contributed by Goldsmith to the Monthly and Critical Reviews, when he was a hack-writer in the most dismal sense of that term, are here collected; and though not to be compared with his best works for humor or for style, they still evince the hand of genius in many a scrap of serene wisdom, and in many a sentence of penetrating sagacity. In the fourth volume, just published, we find an oratorio, “The Captivity,” and a ludicrous scene from a farce called “The Grumbler,” never before printed. Mr. Putnam has issued the edition in a style of great neatness, and has placed it at a very low price. We hope it will meet with a sale corresponding to its merits. It supersedes all the other editions of Goldsmith now in the market, being the best printed, and the best edited of all, and containing several hundred pages of matter to be found in no other collection.
Moneypenny, or the Heart of the World. A Romance of the Present Day. By Cornelius Mathews. New York: Dewitt & Davenport. 1 vol. 8vo.