Читать книгу The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 14, No. 396, October 31, 1829 - Various - Страница 2

Glancing back to the commencement of the nineteenth century, the only annual record of poetry and prose which we recollect, was "The Flowers of Literature;" a thick duodecimo, habited in a flesh-coloured wrapper, and retaining in its print and pages, the quaintness which characterized "the good old days" of the "Universal Magazine;" and which still clings, though somewhat modified, to the patriarchal pages of Sylvanus Urban. The matter was in accordance with the manner—a medley of prosing articles, from the titles of which we might select, as indicative of their style, "Ode to Despair;" "Topographical Description of Paris;" "The Sailor;" more agreeably interspersed with some effusion of Mrs. Barbauld, or Mrs. Opie; mingled, again, with sundry "Observations on the Present State of the War," written by some sleepy newspaper editor, whose language we might assimilate with, "We have received intelligence from," &c. Here and there, perhaps, a straggling beam of genius broke through the mental twilight, in the shape of, "Some Account of the poet, Burns;" a Rustique by Bloomfield, or an elegant sonnet by Bowles or Charlotte Smith. The rest of would-be-sonneteers, tragedy-writers, and essayists, have long ago found, with their mediocrities, a congenial oblivion in "the tomb of all the Capulets."

But suddenly, and without much premise to warrant the commencement of such an era, the department of our imaginative literature was established in patronage and importance; and those "trivial, fond records," which were wont only to sparkle a brief endurance in the mutable columns of a newspaper, or doomed, when existing in fragile manuscript, "to die and be forgot," found a refuge from their Lethean fate in the numerous Magazines which the increased taste, and avidity for reading, evinced by the public, had called into existence. Still there was a desideratum, which these adornments of English Literature, "The Annuals," alone supplied. The casual tones which emanated from the "transcendent masters of the lyre," were not to be lost to "the public ear" for want of "a circulating medium;" and Ackermann, a name familiar to the lovers of pictorial art, had the honour of first setting England the example of preserving her valuable anthology, by producing his attractive Annual, "The Forget-Me-Not;" a species of literature which presents us with the pleasing facility of holding yearly communion with our poets and authors, without being subjected to the tedium of awaiting their protracted appearance in a more voluminous shape. We can now more frequently greet Anacreon Moore, wreathing his harp with the paternal shamrock, characteristically mingled with "pansies for love;" Montgomery, mourning over our nature's degradation; telling us of the affections and passions of earth, yet luring us to higher hopes and brighter consummation; his every line evincing that chastened sorrow which Byron threw into the portrait of the Sheffield bard—

Coleridge, dropping "some natural tears," on viewing the altered features of his native valley; sweetly and affectionately telling of

Southey, forgetting the ungentler theme of "battle field" amidst the sublimity of rock and lake. Campbell, pouring from his plaintive shell a tender eulogy to his northern home—a glowing tissue of

—Scott, terrifically depicting a Sassenagh tournament, or inditing a stirring appeal to the "blue bonnets," to settle some Border broil. James Hogg, "the Scottish Virgil," on whom has surely fallen the mantle of inspiration from the Mantuan bard, coming forth in all the richness of the "Noctes Ambrosianae," from the misty hill where he dominates "the king of shepherds." Delta, elegantly pensive, sighing beneath the blighted trees which flourished over his boyhood; and listening to the rhetoric of the changing seasons. Alaric Watts, "the fireside bard," giving us a touching apostrophe to his "youngling of the flock," in melting verse, warm from that kindred fancy

T.K. Hervey, following in the same bright path, or enthusiastically rapt amidst the beauty and bloom of Australia.—Bernard Barton, bringing us snatches of vernal philosophy, gathered in the silence of murky woods, and the solitude of perfumed meadows.—John Clare, swearing everlasting fealty to his beauteous Mary, by the elm-shadowed cottage of her bowery home; thanking heaven for the benison of love and rurality.—Richardson, the poet of India, sonnetizing amidst the superb cupolas and temples which gem the banks of the deified Ganges, longing to exchange his fevered abode for salubrious England.—Pringle transforming the repulsive features of a South African desert into matter for piteous song; and illumining, by the brightness of his genius, the terrible picture of Caffre barbarity and degradation.—Roscoe, revelling in the sweets of Italian lore, his own lips "touched with a live coal" from the altar of poesy.—Washington Irving, grasping at the intellect, and speculating on the wit and fancy, of all climes; so speedily transplanting himself (bodily as well as mentally) from the back woods of America to the land of Columbus—from the vineyards of France to the valleys of Yorkshire—as almost to induce a belief in his power of ubiquity.—Allan Cunningham, sympathizing with the sorrows of one "who never told her love," and weaving a tearful elegy over her flower-strewn grave, or painting the fiercer incidents of piratical warfare, on the ocean's solitudes.—Felicia Hemans, her lyre musically blending the song of sounding streams with the spontaneous melody of the "feathered choir" composing an epicedium to the memory of departed days, and proving her glorious claims to the poetic character, "creation's heir."—Mary Russell Mitford, great in her histrionic portraitures of liberty, whether patrician or plebeian; yet not forgetting in her dramatic wanderings, her happy village; but drawing us, "by the cords of love," to the rustic scene; amplifying that fine axiom of the Stratford bard—

J.H. Wiffen, dating from the sentimental seclusion of Woburn Abbey, a song replete with all the grace and imagination of his "Ionian Hours."—Charles Lamb, the "deep-thoughted Elia," introducing us to the maidenly residence of his cousin Bridget; delighted with delighting; his fancy expatiating on a copious medley of subjects between the stiff Mandarins on the old fashioned china, and that Beaumont and Fletcher, the purchase of his rigid economy, ere his talents had brought him fame and fortune.—Letitia Landon "the English Sappho," a being existing but in the atmosphere of love and flowers; equally sensitive at the opening of a violet as at the shutting of a rose. But our list of the living is too extended; and we will speak of some of the departed.

Interspersed with the emanations of our existing bards, we have, occasionally, those precious morceaux which have been bequeathed us by the illustrious dead. Trifles, yet how esteemed! Remembrances of Byron, with his fiery impetuosity, spurning the trammels of worldly sorrow; and prescribing death as a panacea for his lamentable despair; yet subduing us with refined regrets, as he was wont, in his changing mood,

Shelley, misanthropically commencing with the turbulence of the chainless sea: a spirit matured to madness by the overawing and supernatural terrors of German romance: as he asserts himself to be, in his lamentation for the author of Endymion, one who

John Keates, forsaking the land of his fame, and prematurely resigning his "quiet breath," on that spot

leaving to the less sensitive reviewers to prove, whether he had been "led astray by the light from heaven, or by his own clouded and tempestuous genius:"

Maturin, though corrupted and enervated by the follies and dissipation of the anti-poetic city, becoming, in his lucid intervals, "himself again," in the composition of a splendid dramaticle.—Henry Neele, the "martyr-student," inviting us to share in the intense admiration of intellect; forcibly demonstrating "that song is but the eloquence of truth"—but of him no more!

Yet, however splendid the galaxy of literary stars may be, which illumine our Annuals, they owe no little of their lustre to the engravings. It fortuitously happens that we have not "a connoisseuring eye," or we should swell this paper beyond the limits prescribed by editorial complaisance, in the pages of "THE MIRROR." We are not ignorant, however, of the incomparable advancement which the science of engraving has made in the lapse of the last ten years; or how far it has left behind those mere scratches of the graver which lit up our young admiration when a boy. Two of these we will be impertinent enough to criticise, in spite of the affection with which we cherish the visionary recollection of the pictures of grandmother's parlour. The subjects were "courtship," and "matrimony." In the former, the Chesterfieldian lover was seen handing his chere amie (a lusty wench, with red ochre cheeks) over a remarkably low stile: whether the subject, or the manner of its execution had inspired the muse, is no matter; but beneath was the following:—

The next was "matrimony;" but, oh! "look on this picture and on this!" The careless husband, forgetting his capacious spouse, leaves her to scramble over a stile of alarming altitude, whilst his attention seems absorbed in the quarrel of two snarling terriers. Such conjugal uncourtliness elicits its merited censure in the cool satire of the accompanying motto:—