Among the critics of the English press there seems to be but one opinion concerning the merits of the two combatants in this literary joust; that the Dean is deservedly castigated, and that Mr. Moon is an unapproachable paragon of literary effulgence. However, this is not to be wondered at. These same critics, and the English press to which they contribute, sadly need a champion, if we may believe his reverence of Canterbury. Gross inaccuracies in syntax, unpardonable faults in style, and frequently occurring examples of slip-shod sentences would appear, from the "Plea for the Queen's English," to be, on the whole, characteristic of the modern English press.
We, transatlantic barbarians that we are, of course know nothing of the English language, and have not the presumption, we hope, to think that we can either speak or write one faultless sentence of the language which we inherit as a means of intercommunion with our fellows. It is our duty to feel "umble," and we do feel "umble." But, while perusing these two books, we have had an 'umble and an 'arty laugh in the depths of our 'umiliation. It may have been very sinful in us, we know, but we could not help it. As the youthful culprit replied, when caught laughing in church, we say, 'umbly of course, "We didn't laugh, it laughed itself!" At the risk of not being believed by those who have not yet read these, two books, we give the astounding information that even an Englishman, an educated Englishman, a dignitary of the English church, a poet, whose verses we republished in America, (and, confound us, left out the u's,) not only speaks and writes bad English, but also on his own showing, by the light of Mr. Moon's volume, presumes to teach others to do the same. Yes, these published lessons of the Very Rev. Dean, in speaking and spelling, are so outrageously ungrammatical, and so faulty in style, that we should not be surprised if the prediction of his antagonist would come true, that henceforth people will speak of bad English as Dean's English. Yet with all its faults it is a useful book; and we think that neither Mr. Moon nor the newspaper critics have done the author justice. We do not like "Dean's English," and it is humiliating, even to an American, to discover that he has carelessly spoken or written it; but we like the Dean's book better than we do Mr. Moon's. We like the schoolboy's walk better than the schoolmarm's. Mr. Moon's style is faultlessly prim and precise, and defies literary criticism; but we have felt, more than once, a wish to take up some of his exact sentences and give them a good shaking, so as to get a little of the stiffness out of them. The Dean has written as most people speak; Mr. Moon writes as nobody ever did or ever will speak. We should write correctly, it is true, but there is a comparison (however paradoxical it may appear) even in correctness. Mr. Moon aims to write "most correctly," and we think that his style is far less pleasing than it would have been if he had simply written correctly. There is such a thing as "punctiliousness in all its stolidity, without any application of the sound or effect of one's sentences." As is his style, so is his criticism. Nothing escapes his eye; the want of a comma, a sentence a trifle too elliptical, a careless tautology, (Mr. Moon would have us say--a carelessly written tautological expression,) are blemishes at which he turns away his face in rhetorical disgust. Nevertheless, we say again, we like the Dean's book. It deserves to be studied by all our young writers, who need to be warned against the use of many popular phrases, and have their attention directed to common faults in construction. It is a lively, chatty book, and keeps us in a good humor from the first to the last page.
The sharp criticism of Mr. Mood is well worth reading. It furnishes us with an index to the blunders of the Very Rev. Dean. So closely has he examined these faults and calculated their guilt, that he actually sums up for us, in one instance, the number of possible readings of one unfortunate sentence. It contains only ten lines, and may be read ten thousand two hundred and forty different ways, as Mr. Moon shows us. Severely as he was attacked, and despite certain personal innuendos, not by any means creditable to his adversary, the good-natured Dean (we are sure of his good nature, from his book) comes off victor, in our opinion, by inviting his enemy to dinner. When a little time shall have healed the bruises of the literary castigation he has received, he will doubtless re-write his book, and give us under another form the profitable hints and helps which at present need a more exact classification.
COSAS DE ESPAÑA.
Illustrative of Spain and the Spaniards as they are. By Mrs. Wm. Pitt Byrne, author of "Flemish Interiors," etc. 2 vols. 12mo. Alexander Strahan, London and New York. 1866.
The publications of Mr. Strahan are well known for the taste and elegance displayed in their exterior dress. The book before us merits a full meed of praise in this respect; but it is one of the most wretched pieces of English composition that has come under our notice. It has a preface of forty pages, which prefaces nothing, being in fact nothing more than a few statistics of railways, the army, the mineral and other products of Spain, jumbled together, with no attempt at order or classification. The first chapter, styled "introductory," is jumble number two, on national character, entertainments, manufactures, railways again, infanticide, education, authors and authoresses, sobriety and smoking.
In the second chapter we are surprised to find the authoress has not yet left Dover. We thought we were in Spain long ago. It is not until the middle of the third chapter that we are permitted to get to the frontier, and by this time we confess we are tired of our gentle guide, and decline going any further. When we are conversing with an Englishman or an Englishwoman, we prefer the English language to that affected jargon which consists in italicizing and translating into a foreign language every emphatic word. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that there are three or four such italicized foreign words, French, Spanish, Latin, or Greek, on each and every page of these two volumes. Our readers may wish to see a specimen. "The first obstacle that met us on this same bridge was a crowd of ouvriers in blouses," p. 26. "The cathedral rather disappointed us, quoad its outward aspect, and offers nothing very remarkable within," p. 27. "There are, it is true, some districts which present a very curious and interesting picture en bird's eye," p. 28. "One day it was a fiesta, on which we made sure of admission, because the entrée is libre on Sundays, and in all else, a fiesta is synonymous with a Sunday; and finally, at the last attempt we made, on the right day, hour, etc.," p. 41, vol. ii. "Boleros and Fandangos are national dances, but they are among the délassements of the plebs," p. 145, vol. ii. Scattered here and there through these intolerable pages we find numerous examples of wit unequalled in dreariness. Speaking of Spanish authoresses the writer facetiously remarks, "One or two have so far exceeded the ordinary limits of female capacity in Spain, as even to dip the tip of their hose into the cerulean ink-bottle." Of the domestic pottery she says: "There is what we may call a jar-ring incongruity between the roughness of the material and the striking elegance of the form." Aquatic gambolling at Biarritz, we are told, "is not the only gambling to be seen there." A visit to the tomb of an archbishop elicits the following: "It is an object of great attraction, and renders the spot chosen by the archbishop an excellent site for a tomb, as it cannot fail to keep the memory of him whose bones it covers before all who frequent the church, and there can be now little left besides his bones. This is as it should be. 'De mortuis nil nisi bonum. '"
Had the book been expurgated of the hundreds of foreign words, and of all these dead-and-alive puns, which deface its pages, and the subject matter been arranged with the slightest view to order, it would have been quite readable, for the authoress is good-natured and communicative, and has an eye for the beautiful and the picturesque, as well as [{859}] intelligence to appreciate the moral and the useful; but, as it is, we think the quotations we have made from it are quite sufficient to prove the justice of our opinion concerning it.
LETTERS OF EUGÉNIE DE GUÉRIN.
Edited by G. S. Trebutien. 12mo, pp. 453. London: Alexander Strahan; New York: Lawrence Kehoe. 1866.
Our readers have already been presented in our pages with several articles and notices of Eugénie de Guérin's character and writings, and they are doubtless sufficiently familiar with both to waive any further reflections upon either in this place. The volume of letters before us is, like her journal, a delicious literary repast, from which we rise with mind and heart equally gladdened and refreshed. Our space will not permit us to give but one or two short extracts. "23d December, 1863. I write to you, dear Louise, to the sound of the Nadalet, to the merry peal of bells, announcing the sweetest festival of the year. It is, indeed, very beautiful this midnight celebration, this memorial of the manger, the angels, the shepherds, of Mary and the infant Jesus, of so many mysteries of love accomplished in this marvellous night. I shall go to the midnight mass, not in hope of a pie, coffee, and such a pleasant dish as your nocturnal cavalier; nothing of the kind is to be found at Cahuzac, where I only enjoy celestial pleasures, such as one experiences in praying to the good God, hearing beautiful sermons, gentle lessons, and, in a quiet corner of the church, giving oneself up to rapturous emotion. Happy moments, when one no longer belongs to earth, when one lets heart, soul, mind, wing their way to heaven!"