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ries—a question that must not die out because the Russian War is past , though one that cannot he settled until a maritime conflict arises , and " some great admiral" "brings oak and stone to pistol shot proximity . The prevailing idea is , at this time , what it was when Blake went out with the English fleet ; for no man hut he believed that ships could successfully attack batteries . He did attack them , and the illusion of Jericho disappeared under his round shot . He pitted his frigates against the fortress of St . Mary ' s , and St . Mary ' s fell , and people at home began to wonder . Then he bombarded Port Ferino , and naval captains of an older school were curious to know how far this audacious system of -warfare could be safely developed . Lastly , he e went in' under the tremendous batteries of Santa Cruz , and bis contemporaries called him a madman who ought to have failed , while , as Clarendon says , his enemies thought him a devil . Mr . Dixon quotes an interesting passage from Clarendon : —
i their lives and property at the mercy of a foreign nation . But one of the Roman soldiers happening to kill a cat in the streets of Alexandria , they rose on him and tore him from limb to limb ; and the excitement was so violent that the generals overlooked the outrage for fear of insurrection !—Claudius Caesar tried to introduce a letter which was ¦ wanting in the Roman Alphabet ; the consonant "V as distinct from U , they having but one character for both . He ordained that ^[ ( an F reversed ) should be that character . It appears on some inscriptions in his time ; but he could not establish it ; though he could kill or plunder his subjects at pleasure / So can the Emperor of Russia ; bat he cannot change the style . This is idle gleaning , but it makes up a sample . Though a volume of selections is seldom adapted for continuous reading , and is scarcely ever edited with judgment , these from Dr . Whately s writings are obviously the choice of one who knows and loves his author .
He was the first man that declined the old track , and made it manifest that the science might be attained in less time than was imagined ; and despised those rules which had long been in practice , to keep his ship and hia men out of danger , which , had been held in former times . a point of great ability and circumspection , as if the principal art requisite in the captain of a ship had been to be sure to corne home safe again . He was the first man who brought the ships to contemn castles on shore , which had been thought ever very formidable , and were discovered by him only to make a noise , and to fright those who could rarely be hurt by them . He was the first that infused that proportion of courage into the sea . rn . en , by making them see by experience what mighty things they could do if they were resolved , and taught them to fight in fire as well as upon water : and though he hath been very well imitated and followed , he was the first that drew the copy of naval courage , and bold and resolute achievement . The royalist Bates , also quoted in this interesting preface , says : —
He found the harbour in shape of a crescent , defended by seven forts lying round it , and two castles placed at the points , -with seventeen s"hips riding therein , their heads standing towards the mouth of the harbour , that they might fire with greater certainty upon those that offered to enter : nor could the governor foi'bear to jeer and flout at the English . Blake , therefore , entering the mouth of ' the harbour with Ms frigates , thunders broadsides and small shot against the castles , till the soldiers flying from , thence , he manned his boats with seamen and sent them in , who burnt and destroyed all the Spanish ships that were there .
Lord Dundonald has assisted Mr . Dixon by revising the naval part of his narrative . He considers that Blake acted coolly , and upon well-considered scientific principles . Mr . Dixon ' s new preface is , therefore , an interesting contribution to the argument in favour of bringing fleets to the attack of land fortifications . Of course he does not imply that Santa Cruz was , in all respects , equal to Cronstadt , or that the Baltic strongholds are not peculiarly situated , and defended by the adapted accidents of nature ; "but he says , bring a ship fably before a stone wall , and the stone wall is not more formidable than the ship .
Selections from the Writings of Archbishop Whately . ( Bentley ) . —This second volume of selections is better than the first . It takes a larger range , and is more diversified . Instead of a crude surfeit of ecclesiastical apothegms , a procession of surpliced thoughts , it is a cabinet of epigrams , liberal and wise , yet not always without the pungency of satire , on arts , letters , and philosophy , on social habits and popular illusions . Dr . Whately has a peculiar aptitude for epitomising his theories ; he is , therefore , a very quotable writer . His style is invariabl y clear , sharp and full , his meaning always plain , his philosophy always practical . Though not addicted to the use of imagery , he possesses a rare faculty of illustrative comparison , as when he compares sophistry to poison , which is given most effectively in small doses , or a spouting orator " to the lion inPyramus and Thisbe , " " does it all eortempore , for it is nothing but roaring . " And how true is this : —
! Por one person wbo is overbearing you on account of his knowledge of technical terms , you will find five or six still more provokingly impertinent with their common sense and experience . Their common sense will be faund nothing more than common prejudice ; and their experience will be found to consist in the fact that they have done a tiling wrong very often , and farcy they have done it right . And , in . opposition to the pedantry of practical experience , what force in this application of a proverbial saying : — The looker-on often sees more of the gcime than the playoi-a . Now , the lookeron is precisely ( in Greek Qewpde ) the theorist . Dr . Whateley deals , by a very summary method , with certain maxims in couplets , which have received a large popular acceptation : — Tho poet ' s remedies for the dangers of a Httlo learning , " Brink deep , or taste not , " are both of them impossible . None can drink deep enough to bo anything more thaa very supex-ficial ; and every human being , that is not a downright idiot , must taste . In the same manner—For fox-ms of Government let fools contost , That which is best administered is be st ; and a hundred other pretentious imitations of philosophy might be disposed of . On literary topics we have some of the happiest illustrations . Dramatists will make a note of the following : — It is no fool that can describe fools well . To invent indeed a conversation tall of wisdom or of wit , requires that the writer should himself possess abilit y ; o-ut the converse does not hold good . Many who have succeeded protty well in painting superior characters , have failed in giving individuality to those weaker ones , wtoou if is necessary to introduce iu order to give a . faithful representation of real Me ; they exhibit to ua mere folly in tho abstract , forgetting that to tho oyo of a skilful naturalist , the insects on a leaf present as wide differences as oxist between tho elephant and tho lion . Slender , aud Shallow , aud Agueoheek , as Shakspere lias painted thorn , though equally fools , reacniblo one another no moro than Richard , and Macbeth , and Julius Coosar .
His analysis of the words , " contingent , " " tendency , " " presumption , " expect , and the expressions " matter of fact , " " matter of opinion , " will lead the literary student beyond his ordinary limits . Speaking of 1 ( limits "—to make an . Irish transition , —tho following must not be passed over : — It is curious to observe tho old limitations of power , in those who aoom despotic , and yet cannU do what Boom little things ; c . « ., wlien the , Romans took pO 88 e 9 B «» n of Egypt , the pooplo uubmittod , Avituout tho least roniatauoo , to havo
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LATTEE DAY POETRY . Nothing is more remarkable in the present day than the devotion of a countless number of persons to the thankless labours of poetry . The age itself , with regard to its outward manifestations , is not poetical ; the English people , os a people , are not imaginatively sensitive ; no great rewards attend upon the cultivation of verse , than which the rearing of cabbages is far more profitable ; no poet is ever known to gain a seat in the House of Lords by reason of his fine frenzies ; nor are the modern Petrarchs-ever crowned in-the
Capitol or at the Mansion-house . Yet day after day they start forth from te the intense inane ; " day after day , some fresh victim is found ready to cast his whole life passionately , sacrificially , into the fiery furnace of poetical emotion , to sing an unregarded measure , to bear cheerfully the expenses of his unsold foolscap octavo volume , to wait smilingly for the Future which will never come , and to write angry letters to his dull , spiteful , or envious critic in " the public prints , " who can't , or won ' t , appreciate him . Surely , poetry must be its own exceeding great reward , for in these sordid times it finds none other .
We have good reasons for such observations , for we are forced to stand a perpetual fusilade of small volumes of verse ; paper pellets for ever rattling about our critical head i a very shower of hailstones out of the clouds that brood over the summit of our modern Parnassus . Here they lie before usa confused heap of little tomes , in red covexs , blue covers , green covers , yellow covers , purple covers , slatey covers , and drab covers—for variety of hue a very rainbow , and as evanescent . We clear them off by shovels-full ; but they gather again . We crack and open them like filbertsin rapid succession j but the stock seems undiminished . They rise out of an energy with which there is no keeping pace ; and , as a cyclopaedia is always obsolete in some respects even before it is completed .. ( . events and discoveries being quicker than the pens that chronicle them ) , s 6 are we for ever in arrears with the tremendous creativeness of those who have drunk of Helicon .
And the strangest part of the business is , that in all this mass of crude and undigested matter , and in the substance of this steam-engine , wrought-iron age , there is a great deal of real poetical tendency , and yet no true poet nor true poem ; excellent materials , but no architect . ; anvils and hammers in plenty , but no Tubal Cain to strike music from them , drawing celestial harmonies put of swart strength and roughness . If , from the various volumes of verse which we receive , some master mind , with a genius for the creative and the orderly , could squeeze whatever is quintessential and vital , could sort element with element , and arrange the wandering and purposeless energies into a shapely total ,
we might bave a poem worthy of the age , and really adding something to the stock . But no such mind has yet declared itself among the young men of our day . What may he tha reason of this strange want—whether it he that our proper business at present is to destroy , and not to erect , that we are in some feverish state of aspiration and desire , and have yet to reach the repose of ascertained truth—is a question of too weighty a character to be here discussed . Indeed , the volumes now lying before us hardly warrant our even mooting it ; and we can only plead having been led inadvertently into this train of thought , which the reader may choose to pursue for himself , out of love for a noble art which threatens to be extinguished for a time , for want of the polarity of one master mind ,
And so from generalities to particulars . The first book that comes to our hand is called Rhymes by a Republican ( London : Marbrow and Co . —Burtonupon-Trcnt : J . Whitehurst ) . —This is a thin volume in blue , which ought rather to have been red , judging from the colour of the " Republican . " He begins with Yive la Republique 1 " and ends with a fierce denunciation of " Pam , " who is described as a " liberal spoken , narrow-minded knave . " Between these two extremities , there is plenty of hard hitting for priests and lords , who are all described as possessing a perfect infallibility of vice and
folly ; and there ? is an attack upon '" a certain exalted and illustrious personage , " as Mr . Jenkins of the Morning Post would say , of so outrageous a character that we would certainly not undertake the responsibility of quoting it , as a specimen of the " Republican ' s " faculty . For faculty , iu truth , he has—a coarse , defiant , intolerant sort of faculty , but genuine . We are not quarrelling with his political or religious tendencies , hut we cannot avoid regretting that a man with so much real sympathy ( as we feel sure it is ) fox the happiness and advancement of the human species , should bo so reckless in scattering the merest vituperation ( sometimes in not very decent lauguage ) on . all who do not move within the circle of his own theories . He should leave such flowers of rhetoric to the
cultivation of tho Bishop of Bangor . In tho meanwhile , he has a hearty , open , manly love for what is pure and honest ; and his plain-speaking , as long as it keeps on this side of invective , is refreshing after tho drawing-room prcttincsses cf feebler poetasters . God knows , wo have plenty to reform , and honest utterance ia half the battle ; but the misgoyernors are themselves the victims of bad arrangements , and through all possible mistakes are still our human brothers , ana not likely to he reformed by the bastinado . Besides , tho " llepublican" has better elements than bitterness . In the midst of eommon-pla « o , ho has tenderness and feeling , us well as a decided faculty for satire and the painting of manners . His measures , moreover , have impulse , character , and tune—showing the true lyrical power . To tho samo general class of poetry belongs a , little collection of verses
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April 19 * lB&G-l 'TBjE L E A ^ BfL 37 ®
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), April 19, 1856, page 379, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2137/page/19/
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