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volume has appeared, and nine others are on the stocks; but never, me teste, destined to be launched in the dockyard of his Western Majesty. There are some sensiblish remarks in this article on the origin of the Arabian Tales, Amadis de Gaul, Mother Bluebeard, the Emperor Charlemagne, and similar new and unhackneyed topics; and a variety of ingenious little devices are fallen upon for the purpose of introducing, in a modest and drawingroomlike fashion, the puff of Mr W. S. Rose, which the scribe had been hired to produce. How much more straight-forward and manly is the style in which we do such things! When you want to puff Brougham, you don't go beating about the bush and whispering his praises under your breath, as if you were afraid that anybody would at once say, here is Mr Brougham lauding himself—No, no, out at once comes your parallel between him and Demosthenes, or something of that cut. In like manner I, after I have supped, undertake to play a spring upon the fiddle of public opinion in honour of Jemmy Hogg, Johnny Leslie, or any other of my chums; and if you hear anybody complaining of me for being a timid or a stingy master of the puffery, depend on it, 'tis the voice of the said Jemmy or Johnny himself, and no other mother's son. But here, just because Rose is a writer in the Quarterly, see what a fuss and difficulty there is about giving him a little bit of a puff there. If he had written for North or you, in how much more manly a style had he not been dealt with! As for the verses quoted in the Quarterly from his translation, I confess they appear to me to be praiseworthy, and I only wonder how either Foscolo or his Englifier had the wit to pick them out.

"On the Recollections of the Peninsula," &c. is Article Third-a very pleasant little book, and a twaddling little review, by a very near connection (as I opine) of one of the scribes reviewed. One is pleased with the display of natural affection wherever it occurs. After all, Jeffrey, you never said a truer thing than when you remarked some time ago, apropos to Barry Cornwall's appearance in the poetical horizon, that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, except the charming flow of the benevolent affections-the delights of friendship-the luxuries of HOME." I remember and quote these

bonny long-nebbed words of yours with great satisfaction. I approve such sentiments, old bachelor though I be.

The fourth article is a thundering affair of and concerning some old baboon of the name of Belsham—somehow I always confound Belsham and Bentham-an Unitarian. These scamps were always horrible perverters of Scripture, but I confess I was not prepared for the de haut-en-bas tone in which this particular heathen dares to prate of St Paul. The reviewer is some tremendous fire-shovel-nobody out of black breeches could possibly have imagined that any rational creature would bother himself with listening to a shallow, ignorant, blasphemous numskull, such as this Belsham. And by the by, since I am talking of them, what excuse has a certain northern University to make for itself, for having created at least one D. D. of this sect? Doctors of Divinity, that disbelieve the divinity of our Saviour! "Pretty divinity, I say.-Compare this twaddling specimen of mere dotardlike odium theologicum, with the masterly crucifixion inflicted by Archbishop Magee. After him 'tis mere slaying of the slain, even to allude to the existence of the crew. And here we have a light and mercurial allusion in the shape of thirty closely-printed pages octavo. The man is no Warburton.

The Travels of A. de Capell Brooke, Esq. A.M. are reviewed in a manner more like your own flimsy style of doing such things, than the Quarterly's. The Tractatus on Malaria seems confoundedly dull work to me-even though you are cut up in it. I hate to see heavy fellows battering at you. Hang it, they have no right to meddle with my amusements.

"Mexico" is the attractive title of one of Southey's most plodding performances. I suppose it is an excursus detached from the forthcoming quarto Poem of PARAGUAY. I wish the Doctor would join some of the Patriots at once.

The new correspondence of the poet Cowper, gives occasion to the next article-and candour confesses, that not having seen the book, I was pleased much with the extracts herein given of it. As for the observations of the Quarterly, they are mere imbecility. The concluding paragraph about "religious reading," is excessively disgusting-quite as much so, though in

a somewhat different tone, as the allusions to such subjects in your own magnum opus. I hate both extremes;heresy and humbug are equally alien to my notions of things.

The Review of Hajji Baba is a very laboured performance. One sees how seriously the necessity of puffing the thing has been felt in certain quarters. Downright, drudging, determined laudation, does the business. To deny that this little work has merit, would be ridiculous. It does, I well believe, embody the whole of Mr Morier's diligent observations of Oriental affairs. But when the Quarterly at once, and distinctly, says, that this book is totally devoid of merit as to the portraiture of human passions and feelings, why does it quote as a specimen, almost the only passionate scene that occurs between its boards? Avoid this sort of nonsense, if you meddle with Mr Morier's chef d'œuvre, -but, the book not being Constable's, you will not probably think of this.

What have we next?-O! the Dry Rot, Rot" the Dry Rot!!!"

Poor Parry! I confess I give up him and the whole concern now. May all this, however, be otherwise than we expect!

I observe, that the Captain has, during his last two voyages, favoured us with Melville Island, Cockburn Cove, Point Croker, Barrow Bay, Clerk's Clump, Hope's Heights, &c. &c.-all this is as it should be; but if he comes back another time without having im

mortalized some equally efficient patrons of his, by such christenings as Gifford's Headland, Southey's Sound, Murray's Moorings, Davidson's Drift, &c. &c. &c. I shall unquestionably set him down as one of the ungrateful. If he had been blessed with a real sense of the fitness of things, he would certainly have called some of these new insects he has discovered after you, my dear fellow; and I'm sure, I for one, shall take no offence, if he does call the biggest of all his hyperborean Bears after

Yours, in the bond of
Periodicalism,
TIMOTHY TICKLER.

Southside, May 16, 1824.

P.S. The only good article in the Quarterly, is the last-that on the Chancellor. But as you have read the same thing so often in Blackwood, you will not perhaps be much amused with it. It is, however, you may depend on it, a real good, smashing article-and if there was any life in Brougham, Denman,&c. before, it must have acted as the completest of extinguishers. Long live the old Lad, say I. He loves Porter and Port, and Church and King-like myself. What would not your party give to have a toe of him on your side-Your lawyers!-Lawyers indeed!-Bombazeen is good enough for the best of you,

says

FINE ARTS.

THE exhibitions of this spring are, without exception, the worst we remember. In London a sort of rival to the Royal Academy's concern has been got up, near Charing-cross, by a set of artists who have chosen to take something in snuff-in other words, who consider themselves to have been ill used in this world by the pictorial δι εν τελει. We are sorry to observe two painters of real eminence joining this new squad-the efforts of which will most manifestly come to nothing. We allude to Martin and Haydon. The former produceth one of the Egyptian plagues, done quite in his old style-indeed, a vast deal too like his Belshazzar's Feast, his Joshua, &c. &c. But with all this, Martin is so decidedly a man of originality and genius, that we regret his feud with the Academy.

T. T.

Let him make his bow, and go back to the only fountain of professional honour, worthy of his looking after, ere it be too late.

Do you the same thing, Mr Benjamin Robert Haydon, if you be a wise man. Your present performance of Silenus and Bacchus is indeed so very cockneyish a concern, that we doubt whether it would have got beyond the antechambers at Somersethouse-but doing a bad thing does not undo a good thing. You, sir, are still the man that painted that head of Lazarus-and he who denies that that is the finest thing our age has witnessed, in the highest and purest branch of the art, is no judge of painting-on that you may rely. Do let us hear no more of your Greek mythology-and do let us hear, that your

next good picture figures at Somersethouse, in the midst of that good company, from which nothing but some absurd caprice of your own could have even for a moment excluded you.

The worst picture in this new exhibition, is one of a widow throwing off her weeds, and rigging herself in gay colours once again-painted by one Richter. This gentleman has the delicate imagination and airy touch of a dray horse.

The Somerset-house show is also excessively bad, upon the whole, this year. What in the name of wonder possesses the committee to admit all these things? Artists indeed! Signposts, tea-trays, stoneware plates, and saucers, are works of the sublimest art, compared with ten-twelfths of the affairs that blaze along these interminable walls.

But, bad as the "tottle of the whole" is, here are good things-here are the good things. Here are three or four portraits by Sir Thomas Laurence, painted in the very finest style of art-graceful beyond all rivalry, masterly beyond all reach of detraction. The Duchess of Glouces ter is such a thing as no other painter, since Sir Joshua, could come within a hundred miles of-Mrs Halford is another gem of the first waterwhat gentle ladylike loveliness !-But perhaps the greatest triumph of all is, the Sir William Curtis-like-yet oh! how unlike !-the very ideal of flattery, and yet the truth, the very truth too! This is true genius.

There is a portrait of a sweet young lady in an ancient Florentine dress, by an artist-whose name we at this moment forget-which deserves to be lauded in the same breath with Sir Thomas's chefs-d'œuvre. The only other thing in this department that much struck us, is a small full-length of a young lady in a Chinese hat, hung în a very bad light, and a great deal higher up than it should have been. This also is a delicious picture-the artist's name is Foster.

Leslie, the American artist, stands clearly and decidedly at the head of those who exhibit cabinet pictures this year. His "Sancho Panza in the apartment of the Duchess," is quite as good as any picture Wilkie ever painted-full of excellence as to drawing, and to colouring-and above all, as to conception. This artist now stands fairly where his genius entitles him to be. We congratulate America. VOL XV.

Wilkie has two very small and very good pictures one of a smuggler selling gin, and the other, of the two girls dressing themselves in Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd. This last, however, is by no means such a favourite with us as that most pathetic bijou (from the same poem) which is in Sir Robert Liston's collection. Mr Wilkie has not any first-rate works ready this year-but it is said he is to make up for this gloriously next season, by his "John Knox at St Andrews."

After these, the next best thing is, "M. Porceaugnac between the two physicians." This delightful, airy, and truly classical little picture, is also, we believe, the work of an American-his name is Newton. He also seems to have found a beautiful and a novel field for himself-Pergat!

Mulready's "wooing the widow," is well painted; but there is considerable coarseness in the conception. It is, however, fifty leagues above Mr Richter's jolly Widow of Suffolk street.

William Allan has a picture of "Queen Mary resigning the crown at Lochleven"-and this picture contains some exquisite painting, and one magnificent figure-that of Lyndesay "with the iron eye." We cannot flatter her majesty this morning. The subject, however, is popular, and so is the picture.

The exhibition at Edinburgh-to descend from great things to smallis miserably off for the want of Sir Henry Raeburn, who is dead, and Allan, and the Nasmyths, who do not choose to take a part in it-for what reason, good, bad, or indifferent, we do not know. Some noble landscapes, of Thomson of Duddingstone's, are the chief embellishment-after two little pieces of Wilkie, one of which, the Gentle Shepherd Piping, has already been alluded to. The other is quite as clever, but not so touching→→ the subject, "Duncan Gray came here to woo."

The best portraits, on the whole, are undoubtedly those of young John Watson-we cannot, however, be pleased with his Earl of Hopetoun. The dress in that picture is, to be sure, so barbarous a specimen of modern Athenian gusto, that no wonder if a painter of any judgment was too much disgusted to be able to do himself justice.

4 D

D. B,

REMARKS ON THE NOVEL OF MATTHEW WALD.*

ALTHOUGH a great variety of longwinded discussions have been written about the comparative advantages and disadvantages of composing works of this class, in the first person, and in the third person, we venture to say, that the truth of the matter lies not far from the surface, and may be expressed in three syllables. Whenever the novel writer places his reliance chiefly on the incidents themselves which he is to narrate, the historical third person is by far the better plan for him to adopt: whenever, on the other hand, his chief object is the developement of character, the use of the first person furnishes him with infinitely superior facilities for the easy and full attainment of the purpose he has in view. Accordingly we find, that the skilful romance-writer, who does make use of the third person, never fails to throw himself out of that by the introduction of dialogue whenever the developement of character happens to become for the moment his principal concern; and perhaps, in a long romance, where many different characters are to be equally, or nearly so, the objects of the reader's sympathy, this partial use of the advantages of the first person may have many things to recommend it; as, for example, the greater variety, not only in the substance, but in the tone of the narrative-an advantage of high importance in a work of considerable bulk-and many other things of the same kind.

In works of more limited extent, and where the writer's purpose is to bind the reader's attention and sympathy on the progress of thought and feeling in one human mind, we conceive it to be quite clear, that the use of the first person is the best expedient. Provided we are called upon to sympathize solely or chiefly with one human being, perhaps this is the best expedient, even when the operation of external events, uncontrollable by him, upon that human being, forms the principal fund on which the writer's imagination is to draw. But where the particular nature of the incidents in which the being is involved, is de

cidedly a point of small importance when compared with the nature and peculiarity of the mind on which these incidents are to exert their influences, then above all, it seems to us clear and manifest, that the uniform adoption of the autobiographic tone is not only the best expedient, but the only good one.-How frigid would the display of the Passion of Julie D'Etange have been in any form but that of confession-how vain the attempt to pourtray Werther by any hand but his own! The story of Gil Blas indeed might have been told as well or nearly so in the third person, because, exquisite as the character of the hero is, there is nothing profound, or dark, or even dubious, in it-nothing but what a third party might have easily enough been supposed capable of completely understanding, and completely laying before us. But whenever the depths of the heart and the soul are to be laid bare, let us have the knife of the self-anatomist-nay, without saying anything about depths, since many human minds may be very shallow things, and yet highly amusing as well as instructive in their display, whenever the secret peculiarities of one man are the principal object, let that man tell his own story-yea, even if that man be a Reverend Mr Balquhidder, or a Provost Pawkie.

Mr Matthew Wald does tell his own story, in the remarkable volume before us, and every person who reads it must admit that it is a story eminently unfit for being told by any one but its hero. It is indeed a story, not only abounding in, but overflowing with, variety of highly interesting incident and adventure; but throughout the whole of its tenor, everything is decidedly and entirely subordinate to the minute and anxious, although easy and unaffected, anatomy of one man's mind; and that mind is so distinct and per se in every particular of its structure, that we feel throughout, and are scarcely ever unconscious of the feeling, that on whatever particular stream in the ocean of life its lot had been cast, amidst whatever theatre of action this man's fate had placed him,

* The History of Matthew Wald. By the author of Valerius, Adam Blair, and Reginald Dalton. Blackwood. Edinburgh. 1824.

however much he might have been elevated above, or depressed below, the condition in which we find him, by the accidents of birth and fortune, and even of education, the issue in the main must still have been the same. It is impossible to suppose for a moment, that if Matthew Wald had been born a duke or a peasant, he could have been either a mean or a happy man. The chief sympathies which he excites are placed far beyond the reach of any external accidents whatever. A haughty, scornful, sarcastic, shrewd, bitter spirit, blended with some tempestuous passions, and softened by a few feelings of the purest and most tender depth these are the main elements of this mind. They would have been the same had he revelled under a canopy, or sweated on a high-road; and in either case the man would have been unhappy, and his feelings would have commanded our sympathies, because his feelings would always have been the feelings of a strong-minded, independent, and self-relying human being; and because no human being can be happy who carries through life the habit, or we might rather say the passion, of psychological contemplation, without being either debased by the personal indifference of a mere cynic, or ennobled with the personal calm ness of a true philosopher; or, which is a better, and happily a more attainable thing, blessed with the personal humility and submission of a true christian. We conceive that the story is not less instructive than interest ing.

Under any modification of form and circumstance, such a tale must have been both interesting and instructive; but it is much the more interesting, without question, because, from its being written in the first person, we are reminded at every step, or rather, to speak more accurately, we are kept continually impressed with the sense, that he, of whose fortunes we are reading, possessed not only a powerful intellect, but a high and imaginative genius; and most assuredly, the story gains from the same circumstance no trivial access of instructiveness, since the natural pride of man can never be too frequently admonished, how incapable are even the highest powers and accomplishments of intellect of atoning for the want of that moral equi

librium in which the true happiness of man consists,—in the absence of which the noblest gifts of our Creator serve not more surely to embellish the narrative, than to deepen the substance of human misery.

The main outline of the story may be sketched very briefly: Matthew Wald is the only son of Captain John Wald, an officer in the army of George II., who, upon the death and forfeiture of his elder brother, (the Laird of Blackford,)in 1745, is fortunate enough to obtain a grant of the family estates. The forfeited gentleman has left a widow and only daughter, whom Captain Wald adopts and protects. At his death he is found to have restored by his will the estate to his brother's child-and young Matthew, having nothing but a very small patrimony, is brought up to the verge of manhood under his aunt's roof. It had been tacitly understood, as was under all the circumstances natural and right, that he and his cousin should marry in due time; and from the earliest dawn of his mind, it is easy to see that a passionate love for the fair Katharine Wald had been growing with the growth and strengthening with the strength of Matthew.

The happy days in which this juvenile passion filled his, and at least seemed to fill her mind, are painted with a few exquisite touches of natural pathos-the remembrance of those days shews like the image of some old and treasured dream.

The mother of Katharine, however, marries the parson of the parish, one Mr Mather, and from this moment Matthew's fair dawn of existence is overcast. Mather has owed his living, and indeed all his advancement in life, to the noble family of Lascelyne; and while Matthew is absent at College, he contrives, by a train of cunning devices, to have his former pupil, the Honourable George Lascelyne, domesticated beneath the roof of Blackford, where Katharine, in the buoyancy of youthful vanity, suffers herself to be torn from the old tacit faith that bound her to her cousin, and at least believes herself to be in love with this handsome young nobleman, (whom in the sequel she marries.) Mr Wald, our hero, it must be observed, is a hero of rather an unheroic stamp, in so far as personal advantages are concerned; and we think some fair romance read

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