"The new lights promised by our authors turn out to be chiefly composed of very old-fashioned rays of darkness, and, after a careful perusal, many will come to the conclusion that the way to be a modern philosopher, is to quote the ancients, praise Bacon, and talk 'bosh.'"
New editions of the works of Fielding and Smollett, profusely illustrated by Cruikshank and Kenny Meadows, will soon be published by Stringer & Townsend. These great classics will never cease to be read with the keenest relish by all the English race. The London publishers of the present edition of Fielding observe in their advertisement:
"It is altogether unnecessary to enlarge upon the genius of Henry Fielding. There is no man in the brilliant history of English literature, with the single exception of Shakspeare, to whose genius has been paid the homage of a more general attestation. Calumny and misrepresentation—the offspring of envy and malice—these, in his day, he had to endure or to deride, and these, with their authors, have long sunk into oblivion. The greatest of his contemporaries knew and acknowledged his transcendent merit, and since his death, there has not been one man of genius whose opinion of Fielding is recorded, that has not spoken of him with veneration and delight. Dr. Johnson, spite of a personal enmity, could not but concede his extraordinary powers. Lady Mary Wortley Montague reluctantly confessed that 'cousin Fielding' was the greatest original genius of the age; the fastidious Gray was charmed with him; and the more fastidious Gibbon has left his opinion on record, that the illustrious house of Hapsburg, from which Fielding was descended—its name erased, its towers crumbled,—will be forgotten, when the romance of Tom Jones shall flourish in eternal youth. If Coleridge classed him, as one of the true immortals, with Shakspeare, Goëthe could not, nor was willing to contest, that he was so; if Byron could cheer his heart and refresh his mind with his pages, so can, and so does, Wordsworth. In a word, the matchless drawing of his characters, which are not likenesses from life, but copies from Nature—the one being a shallow art, the other a profoundly creative power—his exquisite wit, his abounding humor, his natural and manly pathos—in these no writer of narrative fiction has ever approached him.
"While, therefore, nothing can be less likely than that the fame of Fielding should ever be suffered to die, or that, as long as literature exists it can ever diminish, nothing can be more proper than to attempt to extend his popularity—a consummation inevitably to be effected by producing his works at a price accessible, and in a form attractive, to all classes. The late Rowland Hill once observed, that it was not fitting that the arch-enemy of mankind should have all the best tunes to himself. In a like spirit it may be remarked, that it ought not to be permitted to inferior writers to monopolize all the appliances and means of popularity that art can bestow. Accordingly, the proprietors have secured the hearty and zealous co-operation of Kenny Meadows. It would be invidious, and from the purpose, to institute a comparison between this gentleman and his contemporaries; but it may be asserted that no living artist has shown an equal versatility of genius, which points him out as the man best fitted to trace the many-colored life of Fielding. From the illustration, almost page by page, of Shakspeare, where is the man but would have shrunk? but that work of our artist has secured not merely an English, not only a European reputation, but a world-wide celebrity. The proprietors are assured, that from the hand of Kenny Meadows such an edition of Fielding will proceed as we have not yet seen, and shall not hereafter see."
Of Mr. John Bigelow's work on Jamaica, (published a few weeks ago by Putnam,) the London Examiner of April 5th, remarks:
"It contains the most searching analysis of the present state of Jamaica, and, moreover, the most sagacious prognostications of the future prospects of the island that have ever been published. Mr. Bigelow is an accomplished, acute, and liberal American. As such, an eye-witness and a participator of the greatest and most successful colonial experiment which the world has ever seen, he is, necessarily, a better and more impartial judge of the subject he treats of than any Englishman of equal capacity and acquirement. Mr. Bigelow makes short and easy work of planters, attornies, book-keepers, sophistries, and Stanleys. In doing so, his language is invariably that of a man of education and a gentleman. He might have crushed them with a sledge-hammer, but he effects his purpose as effectually with a pass or two of a sharp and polished broad-sword."
The publication of a translation in the Bohemian language of Lamartine's History of the Girondins, has been recently prohibited at Prague by the Austrian authorities.