[LITERARY NOTICES.]
The King of the Mountains. From the French of Edmond About, Author of 'The Roman Question,' 'Germaine,' etc. By Mary L. Booth. With an Introduction by Epes Sargent, Esq. In one volume: pp. 300. Boston: J. E. Tilton and Company, Number 601 Washington-street.
Monsieur About is said to have scared His Holiness, the Pope, the kind and benevolent Pio Nono, (if we may trust any of all the numerous portraits and drawings which we have encountered of him,) in his book upon 'The Roman Question.' The author's very name may have had something to do with it. He was 'about'—he was 'areöund': and the 'French' of his cognomen, as pronounced by his countrymen, was in itself suggestive of at least a signal of alarm—'Ah-booh!' But this aside: the book is a remarkable one, in many respects: and like its predecessors from the same pen, it will make an 'abiding mark' among the artistically-transferred literature to our own, from a foreign tongue. This narrative of 'The King of the Mountains' is not at all complicated. Regarded as an artistical picture, we may say with truth that 'the canvas is neither confused nor crowded.' The story is supposed to be told by a young German botanist. He proceeds to Greece with the purpose of herbalizing in the mountains. 'Carried away by a scientific enthusiasm—the most common and the most pardonable—he becomes the prisoner of a remarkable brigand, Hadgi-Stavros, the King of the Mountains. He is not alone in his captivity. An English lady and her daughter—the former a striking portrait of a class of weak and consequential tourists, and the latter a thing to be admired and loved by any German, or any American, for that matter, under the circumstances supposed—are the hero's fellow-prisoners. The greater part of the book is taken up with a description of the character, positions, resources, habits and influence of the brigand chief; the temporary captivity of the party, who are made prisoners for the sake of a large ransom, actually in view of Athens, (such is the state of the government and police of that thriving kingdom!) and their final ransom and escape. But there are other dramatis personæ beside Mrs. Simons, who is a sort of Mrs. Nickleby, an Anglaise pour ire, and Miss Simons, who does not take after her mother. There are down at the Piræus an American named Harris, a young Athenian girl, hight Photini, and a Frenchman whose ruling passions are archæology and philanthropy. 'He had been rewarded by some provincial academy for an essay on the price of paper in the time of Orpheus. Encouraged by his first success, he had made a journey to Greece to collect materials for a work on the quantity of oil consumed by the lamp of Demosthenes while he was writing the second Philippic.' Harris, the American, is evidently a favorite character with M. About. He invests him with all the best attributes of our countrymen, and makes every adventure in which he is a participator honorable to his gallantry and sagacity: 'The first time I dined with this strange fellow I comprehended America. John was born at Vandalia, Illinois. He inhaled at his birth that air of the New World, so vivacious, so sparkling and so brisk, that it goes to the head like champagne wine, and one gets intoxicated in breathing it. I know not whether the Harris family are rich or poor; whether they sent their son to college or left him to get his own education. It is certain that at twenty-seven years he depends only on himself; trusts only to himself, is astonished at nothing, thinks nothing impossible, never flinches, believes all things, hopes all things, tries all things; triumphs in all, rises up again if he falls, never stops, never loses courage.' One of the best of our American critics, Mr. Bryant, remarks of this book: 'No work of modern times, even in an English dress, serves to convey so capital an idea of the style which made Voltaire famous, as this last agreeable romance of the author of 'The Roman Question.' It is just such a story as Talleyrand would have told over his chocolate, and Sydney Smith relished and decorated with impromptu comment.'
The Literary and Professional Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and Lord High Chancellor of England. Volume II. of the 'Literary and Professional Works': pp. 454. Boston: Brown and Taggard.
Our first praise of this series of Bacon's works must be paid to that feature which first appeals to us through the eye—its typographical execution, by Houghton, of the 'River-side Press' at Cambridge, near Boston, which may be pronounced fully equal to that of the first English printing in choice library editions of kindred standard works. The volume before us contains, with translations, Bacon's eulogium upon Henry Prince of Wales, and the characters of Julius and Augustus Cæsar—the original Latin, with translation. Also amendments and corrections inserted by Bacon in a manuscript copy of Camden's Annals. Then follow, prefaced by a curious bibliographical note by Mr. Spedding, the 'Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral,' published from 1597 to 1625, (the year before his death,) which exhibit 'the earliest and the latest fruits of Bacon's observation in that field in which its value has been most approved by universal and undiminished popularity. These fifty-eight Essays, so wise and so eloquent in their simple yet forcible diction, occupy the greater portion of the volume, and the editor has translated the Latin quotations and added some necessary notes. There is an appendix to the essays, containing a Fragment of an Essay on Fame; reprints of the first edition of 1597, containing only ten, and of the second edition of 1612, with thirty-eight essays, and two essays attributed to Bacon without authority; but, notwithstanding some similarity of style, marked by Mr. Spedding as spurious. There is, also, Bacon's treatise De Sapientia Veterum, itself a curiously learned book, the translation of which will appear in a future volume. 'Bacon was one of the most remarkable men the world has ever seen. His character is a remarkable compound of the greatest nobleness and the most contemptible meanness. But of his intellect, no two opinions have ever been expressed. If we knew Bacon only by his works, we should be bound to esteem him to be as good as he was undeniably a great man.'
Guesses at Truth. By Two Brothers. From the fifth London edition. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.
The Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are still without rival or peer, notwithstanding that Lacon has given us some good apothegms, and Martin Farquhar Tupper, who undertook to render King Solomon into polite English, has had an amazing 'run.' A good proverb is always acceptable: a poor one vexes us always, because the maker assumes the position of teacher, and has no right to be either stupid or mediocre. To set one thinking is more difficult, and indeed more laudable, than to furnish one with thoughts; as it is more praiseworthy to put one in the way of earning a living, than merely to bestow a charity. It is easy, however, to assume the air oracular; in fact there is more or less strength, prima facia, in a pretentious position; and a platitude let off under cover of high-sounding words may be very imposing. We have in 'Guesses at Truth,' a book of five hundred and fifty-five pages, originally published in England more than thirty years ago by two brothers, clergymen, we believe, and now reprinted by the respectable house of Ticknor and Fields. We have looked carefully through the volume; and for once are forced to differ with the publishers as to the taste of reproducing the book here. With the exception of some very fair criticisms on Shakspeare, Milton, and one or two others, borrowed a good deal from Goethe and Schlegel, and certain extended disquisitions absorbed evidently from Wordsworth and Coleridge, the book is utterly common-place. A good deal of it we remember to have met with in our various newspaper clippings—a good deal we confess never to have before encountered. In 'Guesses at Truth' the French come in for very severe hits from the 'Two Brothers' whenever opportunity serves: they are full of the English prejudices of the last century. Mark the following sagacious comparison: 'The French rivers partake of the national character. [We should think it would be just the reverse.—Ed.] Many of them look broad, grand and imposing, but they have no depth; and the greatest river in the country, the Rhone, loses half its usefulness from the impetuosity of its current!' Hear this precious piece of intelligence: 'France—the only region between Lapland and Morocco where youth is without bloom, and age without dignity!' Here is something new about the 'best talkers in the world:' 'Talk to a dozen Englishmen on any subject: there will be something peculiar and characteristic in the remarks of each. Talk to a dozen Frenchmen: they will all make the very same remark, and almost in the same words.' But let us give the reader a specimen of the more abstract 'Guesses:' 'What a pity it is there are so many words! Whenever one wants to say any thing, three or four ways of saying it run into one's head together; and one can't tell which to choose. It is as troublesome or as puzzling as choosing a ribbon or a husband.' Read the following. It is Blackstonian: 'A use must have preceded an abuse properly so called.' The next strikes us as exceedingly original: 'A little management may often evade resistance which a vast force might vainly strive to overcome.' And this: 'Children always turn toward the light. Oh! that grown-up people in this world would become like little children!' The art-world owes much for what follows: 'A portrait has one advantage over its original: it is unconscious; and so you may admire without insulting it. I have seen portraits which have more.' (Sic.) Here is something worthy a place in the 'Rules of Etiquette:' 'A compliment is usually accompanied by a bow, as if to beg pardon for paying it.' We have puzzled over the following and 'give it up:' 'What way of circumventing a man can be so easy and suitable as a period? The name should be enough to put us on our guard; the experience of every age is not.' Further on we read: 'Truth endues man's purposes with somewhat of immutability.' This reminds us of the cautious writer who stated that 'most men were mortal!'
For further examples of senseless platitudes dictatorially expressed, we refer the reader to the work passim. There is nothing more ridiculous than the deliberate sitting-down to write a book of proverbs and reflections. How unlike the genuine flow of the table-talk of some of our best men or the words of wisdom forced, as it were, from the lips of experience. In short, we are sick of pompous mediocrity on stilts: of that placid egotism which complacently assumes the office of guide and teacher, though incapable of aught but the tedious common-place. We do not want the thoughts of great men passed through such alembics—in fact, we much prefer to dilute our own proverbs if they prove too strong for us.
'Guesses at Truth' is beautifully printed on fine paper with clear type; after the newest style of the accomplished publishers. We regret to say the text is marred by the change of spelling of words ending in ed. Thus we find: reacht, lookt, discust, toucht, fixt, packt, etc., etc.—instead of reached, looked, discussed, touched, fixed, packed. 'As the body to the soul, so the word to the thought,' and we do not believe in thus mutilating what we are led by habit at least to consider a fair proportion.