Page images
PDF
EPUB

fully disappoint the hopes which he had formed. He records his observations in a series of Letters to a friend, and this mode of communication, while it relieves him from the restraint which might have been imposed upon him by the idea that he was delivering his testimony at the bar of the Public, is perfectly consistent with the design of his work. He identifies himself with his countrymen, and concludes that he cannot better describe them than by a frank and unreserved display of his own feelings.

The following is a portion of the Letter which he writes, after having taken up his residence in his native

town:

"I have now been better than a week in Strabane, and it is time, therefore, that I should write. Yet little have I to tell, except that I have seen a few old acquaintances, visited my old walks, and that I have found every thing changed, and changed for the worse. Since I was last here, this town and neighbourhood have been visited by two almost of the heaviest calamities which can befal human beings. Fever and famine have been let loose, and it is hard to say which has destroyed the most.

"It would be too much to assert that the latter caused the former; but it undoubtedly was the cause of its wide diffusion. Hordes of wandering beggars, impelled by the cravings of hunger, carried the distemper from door to door;' and, from their wretched habiliments, wafted contagion far and wide. Almost the entire mountain population, literally speaking, took up their beds and walked; and, with their diseased blankets wrapped round them, sought, in the low lands, the succour which charity could not give, but at the hazard of life.

"Irish usages have always opened a ready way to the beggar. The most holy men, says one of their laws, were remarkable for hospitality; and the Gospel commands us to receive the sojourner, to entertain him, and to relieve his wants. Even in ordinary times, the poor claim charity as a matter less of favour than of right; and approach the rich man's door, almost with the freedom of an inmate; but they now, in frightful numbers, besieged every house, and forced their way into kitchens, parlours, and even rooms the most remote.

"Those who condemn the English system of poor laws, would have here found reason to change their opinion; and have beheld the evils inseparable

[ocr errors]

from leaving our fellow men to seek in infirmity and old age that bread, which, were society constructed as it ought to be, should be wanting to none. The immediate evil was the rapid propagation of the fever, which, almost at the same instant, shewed itself in the town and country, the hill and valley,-the Lord's castle,- the tradesman's house,and the poor man's cabin. I do not understand, however, that its malignity was much greater than on former occasions; though its diffusion so outbaffled all calculation, and could only be paralleled in those barbarous times, when battle and murder spread havoc over the land, and pestilence gathered the gleanings of those whom they had spared."

He gives an alarming account of the state of things in the North of Ireland, a district which he declares to be so much changed in the course of ten years, that he can scarcely recognize it to be the same land.

"The late war, while it aided party and increased taxes, increased wealth; and the natural consequences of wealth, refinement in manner of living, improvement in dressing, and a taste for luxuries followed. Of a social disposition as the people are, and captivated by unaccustomed enjoyment, it is possible that even then this prosperity was more apparent than real, and though something was gained, that little was saved. Besides, unconnected as landlords and tenants unfortunately now are, by those ties which bound them together for merly so closely, rents were raised to an enormous pitch, and even in those days paid with difficulty and murmuring, are now scarcely paid at all. With the stoppage of the war, trade seemed likewise to stop, and like a bow too forcibly bent, society, with hideous recoil, flew back to the opposite extreme; for, as if prosperity, which is not very natural to any land, should be particularly unnatural to Ireland, the terrible harvest of the year before last, succeeded to the peace, heaped misery on misery, disease on poverty, and generated the fever and famine of which I have already spoken.

"The Northern farmer, who in general cultivates only a few acres of land, scarcely able to feed his family, and totally unable to relieve the hundredth part of the misery which daily and hourly knocked at his door, fell unavoidably into arrears. Humane landlords spared their tenants, and though the motives which dictated such conduct were in the highest degree praiseworthy, there were occasions in which it rather did harm than

than good; for from the supineness incident to our nature, many, because they could not pay all, relaxed in their efforts and paid none at all.

"But there is little danger that humanity in the excess should ever be very injurious to mankind, and the great suffering sprung from the opposite cause. Selfish landlords and agents filled the pounds with cattle, seized and auctioned grain, household furniture, beds, bedding, and whatever else they could lay hands on; and by this cruel as well as foolish policy, while they gained transient payment, incalculably added to the aggregate of suffering, and irreparably injured their struggling, and to their further shame I must add, meritorious tenantry. The linen-trade felt the general depression; money became so scarce that numbers could not purchase even the flax-seed that was necessary to sow their ground, and thousands of hogsheads, after being in vain offered for sale here, were shipped for England and Scotland, and sold at an immense loss to make oil of.

66

By the combination of these causes, and many others, this country a short while ago presented not so much a melancholy, as a frightful spectacle; the abode once of comfort, it seemed now a huge arena of misery; and law-suits, ejectments, distresses, imprisonments, assailed those whom the fever had spared.

"But violence has in its own nature a period at which it must cease, and the disease in a measure has wrought its own cure. There are few law-suits; for of what avail to go to law, where there are so little means of payment? and besides, many to whom large sums are owing, actually cannot command the trifle necessary to go to law.

In many

places society is transported back to the practice of the ruder ages, and payments in kind are becoming the commonest of any. A few weeks ago a relation of mine disposed of a field of corn which was ready for cutting, for which, according to the valuation of two men who viewed it, she is in December to get an equivalent quantity of oatmeal. A poor man who has a few acres of land from her, and is now nearly three years in arrears, expects, as the harvest is so favourable a one, shortly to pay a part of it, but not in money, but by giving her potatoes and turf. I know not that this has ever occurred to lawyers on circuit, as has been reported, but I am sure that surgeons and apothecaries, (physicians are here pretty much out of the question), have oftentimes been paid in a similar manner."

Continuing his enumeration of these distresses, he adds,

"It is sad to contemplate this fertile land, deserted or neglected by its gentry, its natural guardians and protectors, and leaving their poor tenantry to the mercy of servile and rapacious agents, who shear the flocks which they were appointed to tend, and turn them out in shivering and unshapen nakedness, to meet the storms of these pitiless times. To the absence of those people, much of the misery of Ireland is attributable, and heavy in all probability will be its re-action on themselves, for their shameful negligence of those to whom they owe their means of living, and their cruel and thoughtless abandonment of them. For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise,' saith the Lord, 'I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him.'

"I express myself more warmly than I am wont, but I cannot forbear; for the history of Ireland is a melancholy one, and melancholy is it to think, that Time, which gives relief to the sufferings of others, seems only to give increase to hers. That in this enlightened age, and under a British Government, she should endure as great evils as in the rudest times, and under the most barbarous one; that whatever was of good in her cup, should, by a wretched fatality, be converted into evil, and that all kinds of causes have combined in plunging her into wretchedness; that moral as well as natural ones have aggregated to blight her happiness; that the storms of Europe are concentrated in louder tempest on her forlorn head; and that, situated in the waste of the earth as of the Atlantic, she should meet the first, and feel the most and the longest, the howling blast and gathering wintry wave of climate, situation, fortune, and time. Even that Atlantic which bore to the New World the crimes of the Old, bore back to Ireland, who was in no degree their participator, a fell portion of the punishment of them; for it is my decided opinion, that much of the actual misery, of this province at least, is owing to the undue cultivation of the potatoe, which a few years back, confined as it ought to be to the garden, like the bramble, has now overrun every spot almost to the mountain-top.

"The multiplication of human beings, by this means, is far beyond what the earth can properly nourish, and these bleak and misty hills, fit habitations alone for shepherds and their flocks,

are

are now thickly swarming with men. Far better not to be, than to be for purposes of misery, and to be trodden on and oppressed; and trodden on and oppressed man ever will be, when he is too abundant, and, like every other object, to be valued, he must be rare.

"The superabundant population of Ireland is not the parent evil, but it aggravates every other. Partial emigration has only fed the flame, and besides that emigration is almost exclusively Presbyterian, the sturdy though decaying oak of this forlorn wilderness of man. Reared with high ideas of himself, and with the remembrance full in his mind of those days when his ancestors, bearing the favoured name of Protestants, like Roman citizens in a remote province, lived on a footing of equality almost with the highest, he cannot accommodate himself to the degradation wrought in his once lofty condition, and he takes refuge in America from unaccustomed misery, where his perseverance and industry soon procure him independence and affluence."

This is an appalling picture; but who, that contemplates the condition of some districts in England, can suppose that it is exaggerated or overwrought? It was not for the writer's interest to deal in misrepresentation. His sympathy in so much misery may. have biassed him towards certain popular and impracticable theories, but it does not appear to have induced him in the slightest degree to swerve from the truth. In describing the wretchedness of his countrymen, he has honestly endeavoured to trace it to its true cause, and, without recommending any rash innovation, he has pleaded for the speedy adoption of those measures, which, as far as human wisdom can ayail, may tend to a radical and permanent cure.

7. A New Translation of the Nichomachean Ethics of Aristotle. 8vo. pp. 272. Longman and Co.

IN discussing the question of genius or talents, one point of importance has never been considered. It is this; that where there is a subtlety of reasoning, the interest is proportionally limited, and the fame narrower. Shakspeare is general in his ideas, and particular only in his descriptions of character. Of course no study is requisite to comprehend him; but to be regarded as a deep reasoner, it is to be proved only by inci

dent and exhibition. He was not delivering a lecture, but writing for the stage, where action is to furnish effect, not eloquence or mathematical demonstration. Newton has fame for sublime geometrical philosophy; but mankind knows or thinks no more of him, than that he wielded the club of Hercules, and did what no man else could do. The novelty of his discoveries and the sublimity of his subjects, procured, however, for him his due niche in the Temple. But the invention of logarithms was equally great, and, in Newton's own style; but few persons regard or know the name of Napier. Of this description of persons was Aristotle. His mind was colossal, but he wrote not for the general publick; and, from a proneness to system, he involved in technical jargon, and au absurd code of principles, knowledge of the most valuable kind. His ideas are lost through this; like diamonds badly

set.

Va

We

on

Amidst the false philanthropy, the projects of ambitious persons in the present age, it is pleasing to refer to objects, upon which the philosopher, the scholar, and the man of the world, can rest his eye with satisfaction. The disgusting ambition veiled under the mask of the political creed does not appear; and men of genius are seen to write for the legitimate purpose of writing, that of instruction. rious half-educated people are desirous of raising themselves in life; and then Religion or Politics is deemed the most convenient means. are therefore deluged with perpetual inundations of trash. We are this account glad to see that the conservation of real learning is now become an object of serious concern in the University of Oxford. The severity of the examinations has already been attended with the best effects. As the Clergy are the tutors of the Nation, it promises the improvement of taste, the exclusion of mere sciolists from the Church, the creation of a literary turn, the facility of general ability, and a diminution of dissipation and idle expence. It is upon this principle of augmenting high classical knowledge, that this excellent Translation is formed. There has been an objection to works of this kind, because school-boys may

lay

lay hold of them; but surely there is no objection to forming a collection of fine drawings, because the children of the family may search for the pictures and spoil them. As well we might say, do not use glass, because it may be broken. We conceive, however, that the public taste is greatly injured by not having literal translations of all the great Classicks laid before them, in the manner of this Work. Among many we conceive it would supersede the pseudoapostolical cant of Mr. A. preached, and Mr. B. prayed, and much shrewish railing against Government. But our opinions vary much as to the form of these translations. This Work is professed to be quite literal, and we should like to see translations of the Poets in the same form. We know, that we risk much by letting off such an opinion; but, when all things are considered, we think that a fac-simile has more interest, than a paraphrase. In the choruses of Sophocles, for instance, who can form an idea of the Greek style, from any of the Latin versions. Let us consider too, how much more facile and extensive the learned languages might thus become; nor does there exist a serious objection, except with school-boys, from whom such books are to be withheld. The plan we mean is this; a column of original, and another of literal translation—thus, like Beza's Testa

ments

"Mecenas, atavis "Mecenas sprung edite Regibus,"&c. from royal ances tors," &c.

We lose nothing of the real cast of sentiment and character in the Author only the charm of the metrefication. Now the question is, whether that can be supplied by rhyme or blank-verse. We believe it to be impossible for this to be transfused by any art whatever. We believe it to be just as impossible, as rendering the 'same musick by different notes. For instance, there is immense grandeur of euphony in the following Greek words: Παιδες Αθηναιων ἐβαλοντο φαεινην ωρηπιδ ̓ ἐλευθερίας. [The youths of Athens shook the shining spear of Liberty]. The euphonous effect is owing to the nume rous vowels and liquids, which form the language; but in the translation we have two th's in youths and Athens,

[ocr errors]

and two sh's in shook and shining. We therefore think, that much of our poetical translation is no better than Handel's Messiah played upon a bagpipe; i. e. spoiled. Besides, the flavour of the author is destroyed by dilution. "Corn grows where Troy was." "I have lived, and fulfilled the course which Fortune gave," says Dido; "I came, I saw, I conquered." The dignified march of hexameters is the stately pace of an army. The rhyming verse is pantomimic recitative of the dancing-master. Add to this the difficulty of conveying the local and national combinations of ideas by free translation. Paradoxical, therefore, as our ideas may seem, we think that, upon the whole, literal versions are to be preferred, at least, wherever an accurate knowledge of the author is the object de sired. At all events, we know that nobody would endure a free translation of the Bible, or a fancy cast of the Belvidere Apollo. We wish for no more than a mere change of language in the one; and (because we cannot help it) of materials in the other. Pope's Homer and Dryden's Virgil are puppets in wood, copied from antient statues. Add to this, the enormous utility of such translations to adults, who can thus finish, in advanced life, imperfect education, without the aid of a master, or loss of time, at their period of life, not to be spared.

8. The Enjoyments of Youth; a GroundWork to the Comforts of Old Age. With Notes and Illustrations. Small 8vo. pp. 284. G. and W. B. Whittaker.

FROM the moral and religious tendency of this Publication, it may not improperly accompany the excellent volume to which it professes to be "a ground-work." Though of a very serious nature, it is written in a gossiping style; and we trust that the good produced by it may exceed the well-intentioned Author's warinest expectations.

[ocr errors][merged small]
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

The Author well observes,

"It is not the vile passion of avarice, or any other vices of age, nor their contemptible eagerness for the honours of blue and other coloured ribbons or stars, from which it is necessary to admonish youth no! it is the lamentable seduction of the false and fleeting pleasures he is introduced to, nay, thrust into, from the ill-directed attentions of relatives and friends, that he is to be shielded-from deterioration of mind, abandonment of religion!

"The Author may probably offend some of the silken sons and daughters of Luxury; he could not avoid distinguishing the real from the artificial, and he must comment upon the received pleasures of high life, where his hero is placed, to make his argument out, and this he has preferred doing in a modern period, the time (abating anachronisms, which are sometimes pardonable) occupying the last twenty months."

We shall select a few of the Illustrative Notes:

"Malesherbes (the defender of Louis XVI.), who, I believe, was a Freethinker, acknowledged in his Speech, that Religion alone can give sufficient force to enable the mind of man to support the most dreadful trials with the greatest dignity."

"Sir William Jones, at the end of his Bible, wrote the following:-'I have regularly and attentively read these Holy Scriptures; and am of opinion that this volume, independently of its divine origin, contains more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, more important history, and finer strains both of poetry and eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in whatever language they may have been composed.

"The two parts of which the Scriptures consist are connected by a chain of compositions which bear no resemblance, in form and style, to any that can be procured from the stores of Grecian, Persian, or even Arabian learning. The antiquity of those compositions no man doubts; and the unstrained appli

cation of them to events long subsequent to their publication, is a solid ground of belief that they are genuine predictions, and consequently inspired.'

[ocr errors]

"Little need be added after the above testimony, and from such a man as Sir William Jones, justly held to be the greatest scholar of the day. Bishop Patrick said of the book of Job, That it is as much above all other poetry as thunder is louder than a whisper-it is a noble poem.' After the united opinions of Milton, Addison, Pope, Steele, Sir Isaac Newton, and hundreds of others, equally celebrated for their learning and discernment, Epicurus in vain pronounces men as springing up from the soil like reptiles and mushrooms-others, the eternal generation of mankindothers, of the doctrine of inevitable necessity. Mirabeau's System of Nature, which has lately been reprinted, would drive Religion from the bosom of man; but let our Youth reflect, that he was the most vicious man of his day, wallowing in every sort of sensuality, and without common decency. Deists themselves pretend to a morality!"

"What a medley are our public prints! half the page filled with the ruin of the country, and the other half filled with the vices and the pleasures of it. Here is an island taken, and there a new comedy-here an empire lost, and there a lady's route on a Sunday. - Cowper's Letter to Mrs. Unwin, March 7, 1782."

One note, of some (we do not say wholly undeserved) severity, is thus concluded:

"The serious charge we have to make is yet to come. No woman has dared in this age to print what Lady Morgan has dared to do,-yet luckily the poisonous arrow she has directed against Christianity falls bluntless, excepting among the very impotent and weak, who may be satisfied with a thing -of sound and fury; and it is for the purpose of even such avoiding her in future, that she is at all introduced here. In vain does she make the parade of her studying Locke, when the common rules of plain sense, and public decency (which is outraged when a woman like a writer of frothy novels has thus ventured out of her depth), should have been her polar star. It is utterly impossible that even any young woman or young man, with the least reflection or understanding, could allow her books as fit to be read: the fact is, however, they sell!-and that alone unfortunately seems to be her aim."

"I would particularly recommend the perusal of the series of Letters which

Dr.

« PreviousContinue »