We do not know that we can better express our very high estimate of the work as a whole, than by saying that it is the fit companion of Mr. Longfellow's unmatched version of the "Divina Commedia," with which it is likewise uniform in faultless mechanical execution.
The Bulls and the Jonathans; comprising John Bull and Brother Jonathan, and John Bull in America. By James K. Paulding. Edited by William I. Paulding. New York: Charles Scribner and Company.
"John Bull and Brother Jonathan" is an allegory, conveying in a strain of fatiguing drollery the history of the relations between Great Britain and the United States previous to the war of 1812, and reflecting the popular feeling with regard to some of the English tourists who overran us after the conclusion of peace. In this ponderous travesty John Bull of Bullock is England, and Brother Jonathan the United States; Napoleon figures as Beau Napperty, Louis XVI. as Louis Baboon, and France as Frogmore. It could not have been a hard thing to write in its day, and we suppose that it must once have amused people, though it is not easy to understand bow they could ever have read it through.
"John Bull in America" is a satire, again, upon the book-making tourists, and the ideas of our country generally accepted from them in England. It is in the form of a narrative, and probably does not exaggerate the stories told of us by Captain Ashe, Mr. Richard Parkinson, Farmer Faux, Captain Hamilton, Captain Hall, and a tribe of now-forgotten travellers, who wrote of adventure in the United States when, as Mr. Dickens intimates, one of the readiest means of literary success in England was to visit the Americans and abuse them in a book. Mr. Paulding's parody gives the idea that their lies were rather dull and foolish, and that the parodist's work was not so entirely a diversion as one might think. He wrote for a generation now passing away, and it is all but impossible for us to enter into the feeling that animated him and his readers. For this reason, perhaps, we fail to enjoy his book, though we are not entirely persuaded that we should have found it humorous when it first appeared.
The Life and Death of Jason. A Poem. By William Morris. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
Whether the reader shall enjoy and admire this poem or not, depends almost solely upon the idea with which he comes to its perusal. If he expects to find it a work of genius, with an authentic and absolute claim upon his interest, he will be disappointed. If he is prepared to see in it a labor of the most patient and wonderful ingenuity, to behold the miracle of an Englishman of our day writing exactly in the spirit of the heroic ages, with no thought or feeling suggested by the experience of the last two thousand years, it will fully answer his expectations. The work is so far Greek as to read in many parts like Chapman's translation of the Odyssey; though it must be confessed that Homer is, if not a better Pagan, at least a greater poet than Mr. Morris. Indeed, it appears to us that Mr. Morris's success is almost wholly in the reflected sentiment and color of his work, and it seems, therefore, to have no positive value, and to add nothing to the variety of letters or intellectual life. It is a kind of performance in which failure is intolerably offensive, and triumph more to be wondered at than praised. For to be more or less than Greek in it is to be ridiculous, and to be just Greek is to be what has already perfectly and sufficiently been. If one wished to breathe the atmosphere of Greek poetry, with its sensuous love of beauty and of life, its pathetic acceptance of events as fate, its warped and unbalanced conscience, its abhorrence of death, and its conception of a future sad as annihilation, we had already the Greek poets; and does it profit us that Mr. Morris can produce just their effects and nothing more in us?
We are glad to acknowledge his transcendent talent, and we have felt in reading his poem all the pleasure that faultless workmanship can give. He is alert and sure in the management of his materials; his descriptions of sentiment and nature are so clever, and his handling of a familiar plot so excellent, that he carries you with him to the end, and leaves you unfatigued, but sensible of no addition to your stock of ideas and feelings.