The Editorials of the number are ably written, though some pages are devoted to a solution of the mystery of the Automaton Chess-Player, doubtless the correct one, viz. that, after all the scrutiny which it has undergone, there is actually a man concealed in the pretended machinery. We are not sure that this demonstration, conceding it to be such, is worth the space it necessarily occupies.
In the matter of Criticism, the Messenger has involved itself in a difficulty with some of our Northern periodicals, either party, as is not unusual in such cases, being just about half right. The Southern Editor has quite too savage a way of pouncing upon unlucky wights who happen to have severally perpetrated any thing below par in the literary line, like the Indian, who cannot realize that an enemy is conquered till he is scalped, and some of the mangled have no more policy than to betray their soreness by attempts at retaliation, under very flimsy disguises, invariably making the matter worse. We think the Messenger often quite too severe, as in the case of ‘Norman Leslie,’ but still able and ingenuous. The Poems of Drake and Halleck are reviewed this month—neither of them after the fashion of an ardent and awed admirer—but faithfully, fairly, and with discrimination.
In conclusion, we take pleasure in remarking the fact that the cause of literature at the South is so flourishing as it appears to be at present. We believe the whole number of periodicals which may be distinguished as literary on the other side of the Potomac, has more than doubled during the last two years, and that their circulation has increased in at least equal proportion. We rejoice at this state of things, though it may be justly thought to militate against our own personal interest. The South has interests and feelings which find little real sympathy with us, though a profound and respectful deference elsewhere; and it is right that she should have literary as well as political journals to maintain those interests and challenge respect for those feelings. We shall not grudge them a generous patronage.
From the Charlottesville Advocate.
The Southern Literary Messenger.—The May number of this work has appeared, with its usual variety of valuable matter.
Foremost in merit as in place, are more of those MSS. of Dr. Franklin, which are contained in the April No., and which have never yet been published in any edition of his works. They seem, all, to have been communications to a newspaper called the Gazetteer; though we are not informed whether they actually came forth in its columns or not. One piece purports to be from a gossipping “young girl about thirty-five,” who styles herself “Alice Addertongue;” and who makes an ingenious, (and of course satirical) defence of Scandal. Another consists of some “Queries to be asked the Junto,” (his club, perhaps;) one of which is, “Whence comes the dew that stands on the outside of the tankard that has cold water in it, in the summer time?” The simplicity of this question would warrant the belief, that the doctor was then but little advanced in his career of physical knowledge; unless we suppose that he propounded it only to stimulate some of his friends or readers to thought. The following question and answer have much of the true Franklin shrewedness and pungency: “I am about courting a girl I have but little acquaintance with; how shall I come to a knowledge of her faults, and whether she has the virtues I imagine she has? Answer. Commend her among her female acquaintance.”
The Messenger has Chapter X. of “Lionel Granby;” a sort of novel, in which there has been much to admire; but we are altogether dissatisfied with the present Chapter, crippling, as it does, several of the good things said in the Essays of Elia, by making the hero of the story hear them (and very clumsily retail them) from the lips of Charles Lamb himself, the real “Elia.” We would advise the writer to bring his hero tete à tete with no more literary lions, if he can shew them off to no better advantage than he shews Lamb. What will our readers think of his talking of “the ‘willie draughts’ which are pledged to the memory of boyhood,” meaning an allusion to the “guid-willie waughts” of Burns, in “Auld Lang Syne?”
We like such collections of scraps, as are bundled together in the piece headed “Random Thoughts.”
“Odds and Ends,” by our old friend Oliver Oldschool, is a whole gallery of satirical portraits; representing various forms of human weakness or depravity—sketches of character almost worthy of Theophrastus, or La Bruyere. Of female characters, the Tongue-tied, or Monosyllabic, the Bustlers, the Tom-boys, the Peace-sappers, the Tongue-warriors, and several other classes, are held up to just ridicule; and of males, the Busybodies, the Touch-me-nots, the Gastronomes, the Devillish Good Fellows, &c. &c.