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LATTER-DAY POETRY " Miching Mallecko , and Other Poems . By Paul Riehardson . ( Burton-upon-Treat : Whitehurst . London : J . and C . Mozley ) . — -This is a volume by a wr iter who has already put forth , some verses which , are here reprinted , » nd of which we spoke hi a former marshalling of Latter-day Poets ( Leader ^ April 19 , 1856 ) . The first poem in the present book is , ye believe , original ; but vre can do little else than repeat our previous opinion of tie author ' s general practice . . Again we have to regr-et that a ¦ writer of such evident honesty and such manifestly good intentions should indulge in vulgar abuse and -virulent denunciation of -everybody and everything he does not happen to agree with . He commences his present volume with some remarks on the critics of his former publication , the upshot of "which is that they are all knaves and fools . Then he j > asses forth into the great world of humanity .
Everybody there too is a knave , or a fool , or both , -with the exception of Mazzini—and himself . Every lord is a rascal and a numskull . Every priest is ditto . Every minister and every member of Parliament is a perfect sink of iniquity . Every man -who goes to church is fit only to be kicked out of tfae "world ; just as , in the opinion of f anatics on the other side , every man who does not go to church should be devoted to * i similar fate . Every young lady who dances a polka at a ball is in heart the same as the poor girl vrko leers at us from under the street lamps towards the small hours of the morning . In . short , everybody who does not act as Mr . Paul Richardson acts , and thinks as Mr . Paul Richardson thinks , is an abandoned scoundrel or a born idiot . All this is , mere petulant egotism , strutting in the mask and domino of heroic virtue ; and we the more regret to see it because Mr . Richardson has real faculty , and because there is so much to be done in the tvoy of reforming and bettering the world that it is painful to find intellectual power thrown away in the ravings of what is truly nothing more than another form of bigotry , as great as any which it attacks . If this country be
so thoroughly corrupt as Mr . Richardson would have us believe—if we simply get worse and worse with every age—if we have fallen helplessly ^ away from , some ideal time of heroism , and freedom , when ( as Mr . Richardson maintains , but -without fixing the date ) England was always fi ghting the battles of liberty all o-ver the earth , and making kings and emperors bow before her—it is clear that the case is hopeless . Such writings , therefore , . supposing them to have any effect at all , simply plunge us into despair and inaction . There is much truth in many of Mr . Richardson ' strictures , and lie has such a free , hearty admiration of what is noble and generous in the Abstract , that we are sure he is really desirous of doing service to the world ; but we put it to him as a man of sense whether he would not effect that purpose niiich better by acknowledging the good that is in society , as well as denouncing the , bad , and by tempering his denunciations with a little ^ charity for individuals ,, who , whatever their mistakes , may not be either - absolute scoundrels or hopeless blockheads . We are almost tempted to ¦ a pply ' to Mr . Richardson some lines of his own , and to say that he is
Without the love that seasons life with joy , Or -wit to draw its better flavour out . Because the rind is bitter to the taste , He'Jl suck an orange witl . a sour , wry face , And find no sweetness in . it . This is : a singular strain in which to review a voknrne of poems ; but Mr . . Richardson seems to consider that poetry is little else than rhymed politics , and expresses great scorn of those -vvho think otherwise . Of his poetry
itself we may confidently say , that it indicates unquestionable faculty . Amid much wildness , incoherence , and ribaldry , sometimes bombastical -and occasionally commonplace , we find a true feeling for beauty and ^ grandeur ; passages exhibiting thought and originality ; bold strokes of wit And satire , alternating with tender gleams of description ; rough humour . aod savage sarcasm . Very admirable are his mock Methodist prayer and -sermon-, vei-y ^ spiritedsome of his lyrics . And so we will part company with him . in iriendly mood , and hope to hear him singing in a pleasanter strain at some future day .
The Fairy Family ; it Series of Ballads and Metrical Tales illustrating the Fairy Mythology of Europe ( Longman and Co , ) . —That beautiful system of spiritual life which succeeded to the demi-gods and nymphs o antiquity , . and which is summed up in the Anglo-French word ' faery , ' has formed the . flabject of dramas , ballade , and narrative poems out of number , from the . gorgeous Midsummer Night ' s Dream of Shakspeare down to the humble OQonposition of the magazine verse-wrifcer . Here , however , is a gentleman vrho puts forth a whole volume of fairy poetry , dividing his romances systematically among the Fairies of the Woods and Groves ,, the Fairies of the Fields * Meadows , the Fairies of the Hills and Caves , the Fairies of . the HearthB and Homesteads , and the Fairies of the Seas and Rivers . Bach I of these sections he prefaces with a short prose account of the particular -class of elves alluded to ; so that the book is a minor of the whole fairy world . The idea is a pleasant one , and it is pleasantly carr ied out , though the author strikes a somewhat conventional key note in his Preface , lie says that he " has been l < jd to the composition of this work chiefly by the £ ct that hile
a , w Fairy Lore possesses a . charm and an attraction above all others for young people , and while its value and importance as a jaeans of moral instruction are fully recognized , much of our Fairy Literature , bo eagerly longed for and so greedily devoured , ia but moral poison—weakened by unmeaning extravagances , polluted by indelicate allusions , and disfigured by purposeless crueltiea and crimes . The Fairy Mythology has alwuyu appeared to him to present peculiar advantages as a medium Jot virtuous teaching" AVhat fairy tules the writer can have been in the habit of reading me lenow not . It is quite now to us to learn that so large . a part of our JFairy Literature is moral poison ; and w * confess we cannot avoid mi uneasy ieeling when we eee a poet objecting to extravagance in jx fairy tale < ob ii zfchat . were not its very life ) , and Kitting down—wo had nhnoat eoid with : xoalioe prepense—to turn tho bright and buoyant sports of . fancy into ^ mediuuia for virtuous teaching . ' iSave us from the curae of '' good ; and l > ad boy books' invading the pleasant realm of Faery I But further on wo found tho author aBfierting that he hactakun care " that the moral shall be worked out in the development of the tale—not tacked to the ^ ndxrf it , to
stand an pointed but unamiable antithesis to all that has ( rone bpfh ™ » t \ 7 was reassuring ; still more so to find that the tales are very agreeably told in flowing and graceful verse , with just as much poetry in the treatment as the youthful readers to whom the book is mainly addressed would com prehend and enjoy . Some of the stories have been told in verse before fiw instance , the tale of John Wilde , the avaricious farmer of llii" -en we ' ,, " collect to have seen in the form of a ballad ; but it is an excellent fiction " and will bear twice telling . The volume is handsomely printed and tf ' can recommend it to old and young ( provided the old still retain somp youthfulness of heart ) as a pleasant resource for a leisure hour .
The Pleasui-es of Home , a Poem in Five Cantos , by the Rev Janiei Thomas Campbell , M . A . ( Saunders and Otley ) , has a very appropr iate motto from Christopher North : —" Commonplace and all-time truths are the staple of all true poetry . " A very few pages of Mr . Campbell ' s verse will show that he has carried this precept into practice—as far that is to say , as commonplace is concerned . Ami ; yet there is something original about him , too . He dedicates his book "To Jane and Julia * the-two companions with whom I have passed my life , and to whom I owe its many mercies and blessings . " And he finds it necessary to explain his own obscurities in a foot-note . Thus we read in the text— " And is she gone ? " to which is appended this prose comment at the bottom of thepanB : —'• The allusion here is to Julia , the younger of the two sisterswho died
, suddenly , " &e . It is rather startling to find Mr . Campbell vindicating Nelson ' s Lady Hamilton from the revilings of the over-good ; but tins piece of liberality is entirely neutralized in the next page by a prodigious howl of bigotry . Frenchmen , yells Mr . Campbell , are " a polluted race accursed of God . " But we , it seems , are not much better , because we are in alliance with France instead of fighting her , and because we impiously desire to be at peace with all men , and to that end make railways , and electric telegraphs , an-d such-like profanities . Indeed , we are ' a race of fools , ' George III . was the greatest of kings ! Towards the conclusion of his book , Mr . Campbell froths up into a frenzy about the advance of Romanism , which lie conceives is fast dragging us into the bottomless pit ; and here we think it high time to leave him .
Gwendoline and Winfred ( John Moxon ) is an anonymous poem , the author of which informs us that he ( or she ) has ' bowed in wild idolatry' before the ' altars' of ' poesy . ' He bids his book ' go forth and brave the critic ' s sneer ; 3 then ( for a novelty ) likens it to a bark , and hopes that a ' pilot hand' may guide it to some harbour where it may c the malice of the world defeat . ' The reader , no doubt , knows what to expect from this sweltering egotism . If he does not , we may inform him that lie will find nothing in Gwendoline U 7 id Winfred but f eeble verse , pallid sentimentality , and bad grammar . As thus : — My tale is done , my song is sung , And dtom my hand the bright harp flung , With broken strings , for many a day In aching solitude to lay .
A Summer Evening lleverie , and Other l ^ ocms , by William Tidd Matson ( Bulman ) , have received the kind encouragement of several eminent men , and exhibit amiability and sweetness . Mr . Matson . is full of generous sympathy with the oppressed nationalities of Europe , and advocates their enfranchisement with a warmth which has nothing of virulence in it . TJie best poem in his book is the first , which contains some striking and even fine passages . Mr . Heraud has published a new and revised edition of his Judiimcnt of the Flood ( Bogue ) . The poem has obtained many admirers ; but we regret we cannot add ourselves to the list .
Yetodale , a ? id Lyrical Noles ^ by S . H . Bradbury ( Houlston amd Wright ) . — This is a new volume of poems by a versifier who lnis obtained some little celebrity under the strange nickname of Quallon . ' It exhibits all the bad features of his former writings , confirmed and exaggerated . Sentimentality , extravagant and inept metaphors , and a tendency to harp upon certain showy words , again meet us in every page . He writes so much of jewels and gold thai he must be the son of a lapidary by the daughter of a goldsmith ; and be has an unctuous , lax-mouthed way of talking about women which is positively nasty . Ho speaks of one young lady who has lips of ' luscious ripeness ; and of another we are told that ' her merry lips with lushest looks were rife '—a line suggestive of nothing but the ni . uht saloon . A few pretty passages may be found here and there ; but they will not compensate "the reader for the load of glittering rubbish out of " which lie has to pick tliem .
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INDIAN PAMPHLETS . The best days of the pamphleteer are past . The journalist lias superseded him . The sale of not one pamphlet out of a hundred pays tho cost of publication . Formerly , JustithV or 'An Englishman , ' by issuing twenty-four pages of invective , might kindle an agitation ; but in our days lie appeals only to a quiet class of readers , or , still oftenev , to writers wlio mala , use oi his facts and illustrations , and leave his modest work to immortal obscurity . Mr . Gladstone , a few years ago , made a hit with a pamphlet on the ; Nea polilan prisons ; a little earlier Lord Brougham had made a failure on the French liepublic . Nevertheless , dwindled though they be to comparative
insignificance , the pamphleteers are generally an . important , self-ileirying , patriotic race . Frequently , of course , they have a personal object in view'Medicue ' writea on sanitary reform , and advertises a plan of his own ; a ' British Officer' discourses on army purchase ,, and we discover , belbru long , that he has been maltreated ut the Horse Guards ; ' Chancery Lane' proposes aa . association upon public grounds , and we ( ind that he would be liappy to act as ats paid solicitor . ; but , in nine cases out of teai , your puinnhleiL-er is amax who , havingviewa of his own , no orgau through which to disseminate thorn , and . no cUaiuie of being allowed suilicient spucc by the Times or J ) mty Mews prints thorn upon fair paper in clear tvne . nrocures tbe co-openition to
ox . Mr . l > Jittpmttu , M . r . Ridgwiy , or Mr . EuWham Wilson , sends copies the pros , and Jiatens impatiently for on otiho . Xhe ludiuu iirieis has engendered a large variety of pamp hlets , eacu
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$ 30 THE Ii E A D E B . [ STo . 392 , September 26 , 1857 .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 26, 1857, page 930, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2211/page/18/
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