From Fuller we pass to Fuller's new biographer, the only biographer he has hitherto had that at all deserves the appellation. A completer life-history than that which Mr. Bailey has produced is of rare occurrence in English literature. There was no motive for his keeping back anything that is known of Fuller; and he has really enabled us to form wellnigh as distinct an idea of the portly and cheery old divine as if we had known him in the flesh. Faithful to rigid justice while reproducing the warmly eulogistic judgments which have been passed on Fuller, especially in this century, he has given us a circumstantial account of the censures which were denounced on him by microscopic and malevolent criticasters and Dryasdusts among his contemporaries. Some of the censures referred to were grounded on the multitudinous dedications in which Fuller indulged; and, in truth, it strikes one as rather singular to find, as in his Church History, not only every book, but every section of a book, prefaced by a long string of compliments addressed to a separate dedicatee. But these dedications meant money, and Fuller was poor. Furthermore, if in his necessity he flattered, his flattery was, for the most part, of a kind not irreconcilable with due self-respect on the part of the flatterer. It is a very different thing from the nauseous adulation to which Dryden—to name but one out of numerous kindred offenders—consented to abase himself. As auxiliary to a full understanding of Fuller in his social relations, his dedications are now of prime value. Though many of them are inscribed to persons else quite unknown to fame, with a good number of them it is otherwise; and they serve, by the information which they embody, to show that Fuller was on terms of familiar intimacy with a whole host of notabilities in Church and State. Of these personages, and so of many others with whom Fuller associated, Mr. Bailey, heedful of the adage noscitur a sociis, has compiled very satisfactory sketches, derived in all cases from the most trustworthy authorities. In addition to a Life of Fuller, he has thus gone far to give us a sort of biographical dictionary of the leading men, political and ecclesiastical, who rallied round the unfortunate First Charles, and who used their most strenuous diligence to save his desperate cause from shipwreck.
One who has already made acquaintance with Fuller's writings must feel animated, under the guidance of the new light now thrown upon them, to renew that acquaintance; and he to whom the wise and witty old worthy is as yet a stranger must, unless obdurately insensible, be moved to a suspicion that he ought to remain a stranger no longer. To Mr. Bailey we are beholden alike for a biography of the first excellence, and for a sterling contribution to the history of an era which possesses undying interest for every Englishman, be he conservative, liberal or republican; and for every intelligent American as well. We are given to understand that the author has now in contemplation the publishing of Fuller's sermons, of which there has never been a collective edition, and of which several are among the rarest books in our language. The design is one which challenges the furtherance of every lover of good literature; and the Life, which, in parting, we emphatically commend to our readers, should avail to secure for it the encouragement it unquestionably merits.
The Greville Memoirs: A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV. and King William IV. By Charles C.F. Greville. Bric-à-Brac Series. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.
The distillation from Mr. Greville's copious memoirs which Mr. R.H. Stoddard has made for his interesting series is perhaps quite enough of a good but not very noble thing. Our gossip-loving part is not the proudest part of our nature, and Mr. Greville has but two crowned kings of gossip to celebrate, so far. It is amusing enough to see the disgusted clerk of council coming out of the audience in a fret, and hear him saying, as he does in good set terms, that the Fourth George is a spoiled, selfish, odious beast. What must inevitably strike the republican mind is that, after all, this sceptered beast was allowed to govern the country and defend the faith through a long, peaceful and stupid reign, and that his company was, on the whole, thought preferable to his room by a free people. As for the next monarch, William, never was there such a Roi Carotte, and Offenbach seems to have been born to immortalize him in one of his peculiar versions of history. He was not exactly a king in a pantomime, for he talked incessantly, but he was such a vulgar, malapert, meddling, fatuous squireen of a king that etiquette lost its raison d'être in his presence, and government ministers and foreign ambassadors laughed almost openly at his folly—all except Talleyrand, who sat with composed face through his dinner-speeches, and said softly that they were "bien remarquable." We cannot but think, however, that in this delineation of two nursery-rhyme kings the artist has put a bit of himself. If Mr. Greville had been really in the current of the social and political questions of the day, which included some wonderful reforms, instead of the born bureaucrat that he obviously was, he would perhaps have got a little more rational human nature into his portraits, or at least have given more importance to their background and surroundings. He writes himself down very clearly as a watcher of scandals and lover of backstairs history; a man of elegance and gentlemanly instincts in a rather small way; a person very easily shocked at social maladdress; a reading man intensely fond of literary company; and a racing man who periodically laments that he cannot cure himself of his love of the turf. Amiable, frank, and of that graceful mental bearing that bespeaks good blood rather than good marrow, he is keen but superficial in what he notices, and tries his tooth constantly on the really great figures of the day, Brougham and Wellington, who are objects of his dislike. It is harsh to say so, but, in fact, Mr. Greville completes a triad with his pair of vicious and narrow monarchs as he sails down the same stream, snarlingly protesting, but quite unconscious of the currents that are modifying the age. At present, as we know, nous avons changé tout cela. British Virtue in person is on the throne, and she disarms satire by handing her memoirs in person for revision to the Greville of the day, who happens to be Sir Arthur Helps; and this secretary is no turfman, never in his voluminous writings betraying the least acquaintance with a horse; but he is what is a great deal better, a sort of burgher Lord Bacon, a philosopher replete with the wisdom of the nineteenth century, and able to give it out in genial chapters for the use of schools. From Greville to Helps—both attached to one single monarchy—we see what a step has been made, and how short a time now-a-days will change types completely: Greville, padded, full of deportment, devoted to the great, with simple faith in the institutions of family, and criticising royalty with that petulant ease of a valet which, in its way, is adhesion and adoration; and Helps, a pamphleteer in six easy lessons, a pedagogue in guise of an essayist, a man in the current of all our reforms—above all, the meek editor of the queen's diaries.
Books Received.
The Bhagavad Gitá. Translated from the Sanskrit by J. Cockburn Thompson. Chicago: Religio—Philosophical Publishing House. S.S. Jones.
A Practical and Critical Grammar of the English Language. By Noble Butler. Louisville, Ky.: J.P. Morton & Co.
The Puddleford Papers; or, Humors of the West. By H.H. Riley. Boston: Lee & Shepard.