[page 36:]

September 1835

1. [Robert Folkestone Williams]. Mephistopheles in England.

2. J[ohn] Orville Taylor. The District School.

3. The New England Magazine (September 1835).

4. The Western Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences (July 1835).

5. R[obert] Potter, trans. Euripides.

6. Robert Southey. The Early Naval History of England.

7. [Eliza Leslie]. The Gift ... for 1836. [page 37, column 1:]

♒ 1 ♒

CRITICAL NOTICES.

Mephistopheles in England, or the Confessions of a Prime Minister, 2 vols. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard. In a long poetical dedication this book is inscribed “to the immortal spirit of the illustrious Goethe” — and the design, title, and machinery are borrowed from the Faust of that writer. The author,(a) whoever he may be, is a man of talent, of fine poetical taste, and much general erudition. But nothing less than the vitiated state of public feeling in England could have induced him to lavish those great powers upon a work of this nature. It abounds with the coarsest and most malignant satire, at the same time evincing less of the power than of the will for causticity — and being frequently most feeble when it attempts to be the most severe. In this point it resembles the English Bards(b) and Scotch Reviewers. The most glaring defect, however, in the structure of the book is its utter want of keeping.(c) It appears, moreover, to have no just object or end — unless indeed we choose to consider that its object which is the object of the hero proper himself — “the hell-doomed son of Sin and Death Mephistopheles” — to cherish and foster the malice, the heart-burnings, and all evil propensities of our nature. The work must, therefore, as a whole be condemned, notwithstanding the rare qualities which have been brought to its composition. To prove that these qualities exist in a very high degree in the writer of Mephistopheles, it would only be necessary to spread before our readers the scene of the Incantation in the Hartz. It is replete with imagination of the most etherial kind — is written with a glow and melody of language altogether inimitable — and bears upon every sentence the impress of genius. It will be found a seasonable relief from the mingled coxcombry, pedantry, and gall which make up the body of the book. But we will confine ourselves at present to an extract of a far different nature, as affording a better exemplification of what we have previously said.

“Between the acts the curtain rose for a divertisement(*) [[divertissement]], in which the incomparable Taglioni made her appearance. She was greeted with the loudest demonstrations of popularity front her numerous patrons, which she acknowledged by several graceful courtesies. ‘Behold! said Mephistopheles, directing my attention to the evolutions of the dancer, the progress of civilization. If all this were not so graceful it would be indecent, and that such an exhibition has a moral tendency is more than doubtful. Look at that young girl in the pit. She has seen sufficient to crimson her face, neck, and shoulders with a blush of shame, and she hides her head from a sight which has shocked her sense of decency. There is no affectation there. She is an innocent girl fresh from the country who never saw a ballet in her life. Yet all the rest, man, woman and child, gaze on delighted. Every glass is raised the more closely to watch the motions of the figurante. Look! — she makes a succession of vaults, and her scanty drapery flying above her hips discloses to her enraptured admirers the beauty of her limbs. A thousand hands beat each other in approbation. Now she pirouettes, and observe the tumult of applause which follows. She stands on her left foot, on the point of her great toe nail, extending her right leg until the top of her foot is in a parallel line with the crown of her head. In this position she bends with an appearance of the greatest ease, till her body nearly touches the ground, and then gradually rises with the [column 2:] same infinite grace amid enthusiastic bravos and ecstatic applause. Now on her tip-toe, her right leg still extended, she moves slowly round, liberally extending to all her patrons within sight the most favorable opportunity of scrutinizing the graces of her figure, while the whose house testify their infinite gratification at the sight by every species of applause. Again she comes from the back of the stage, turning round and round with the speed of a tetotum(*) [[teetotum]] but with an indescribable and fascinating grace that seems to turn the head of every young man in the theatre. During the storm of approbation which ensues she stands near the footlights, smiling, courtseying, and looking as modest as an angel. Then comes Perrot, who is as much the idol of the ladies as Taglioni is the goddess of the gentlemen. He leaps about as if his feet were made of India rubber, and spins around as if he intended to bore a hole with his toe in the floor of the stage. Then a little pantomime love business takes place between the danseur and the danseuse, and they twirl away, and glide along, and hold eloquent discourse with their pliant limbs; and the affair ends by the gentleman clasping the lady round the waist, while he, bending his body in the most graceful attitude, so that his head shall come under her left arm, looks up in apparent ecstacy into her smiling face as the lady raised high above him on the extreme point of her left foot, extends her right hand at right angles with her body, and looks down admiringly upon her companion. Thus grouped the curtain drops, and every one cries bravo! thumps the floor with his stick, or beats his palms together till such a din is raised as is absolutely deafening.’

“ ‘She is a charming dancer,’(d) I observed.

“ ‘Yes' — replied he — 'she understands the philosophy of her art better than any of her contemporaries: it is to throw around sensuality such a coloring of refinement as will divest it of its grossness. For this she is paid a hundred pounds a night, and is allowed two benefits in the season which generally average a thousand pounds each. While you are thus liberal to a dancer, some of the worthiest of your ministers of religion receive about fifty pounds per annum for wearing out their lives for the good of your souls; and many of your most exalted men of genius are left to starve. Such is the consistency of human nature.’ ”

♒ 2 ♒

The District School, or National Education, by J. Orville Taylor. Third Edition. Philadelphia: Carey Lea & Blanchard. This work has met with universal approbation, and is worthy of it. The book was first published only a short time ago, and the third impression will speedily be exhausted, as parents have a direct personal concern in the matter, and in the important truths, duties, and responsibilities, herein pointed out. Mr. Taylor is entitled to the gratitude of his countrymen for that beneficial impulse which his work has been, and will be the means of giving to the great cause of General Education. “If a parent,” says Mr. Taylor, “does not educate his child-the world will.” We sincerely hope so. As the District School now appears it has been entirely re-written, and such alterations and additions made as the experience of the author suggested. We heartily wish it all the success it so eminently deserves. [page 38:]

♒ 3 ♒

The New England Magazine for September is unusually rich. Among its numerous and very excellent articles we would particularly notice a paper called “My Journal” — and more especially Scraps of Philosophy and Criticism from a recent work of Victor Hugo's. One of these Scraps on Style, we are sure we shall be pardoned for extracting.

♒ 4 ♒

The Western Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences, edited by Daniel Drake, M. D. Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in Cincinnati College, and formerly Professor of the same in Transylvania University, and the Jefferson Medical College, Doctors C. R. Cooper and S. Reed, assistant Editors and Proprietors. Vol. IX, No. 33. We have received this Journal with the greatest pleasure, and avail ourselves of the present opportunity to [column 2:] express our opinion concerning it. It is an invaluable addition to our Medical and Scientific Literature, and at the same time one of the very cheapest publications in the country, each number containing 168 pages of closely printed matter, and the subscription price being only $3 per annum. The work is issued on the first day of July, October, January, and April, and has lately been incorporated with the Western Medical Gazette. We sincerely wish the publication every possible success — for it is well worthy of it. Its typographical and mechanical execution altogether are highly creditable to Cincinnati, and the able and well known collaborators, a list of whose names is upon the opening page of each number, and whose editorial offices are engaged in the service of the Journal, will not fail to impart a sterling character and value to the Medical, as well as purely Literary portions of the work. We take the liberty of extracting from page 79, of the present number, (that for July) an interesting account of a cure of partial spontaneous combustion,(a) occurring in the person of Professor H. of the University of Nashville. The portion extracted is contained in a Review of An Essay on Spontaneous Combustion, read before the Medical Society in the State of Tennessee, at their annual meeting in May 1835. 1 y James Overton, M. D.

♒ 5 ♒

The Classical Family Library. Numbers XV, XVI, and XVII. Euripides translated by the Reverend R. Potter, Prebendary of Norwich. Harper & Brothers, New York. These three volumes embrace the whole of Euripides — Æschylus and Sophocles having already been published in the Library. A hasty glance at the work will not enable us to speak positively in regard to the value of these translations. The name of Potter, however, is one of high authority, and we have no reason to suspect that he has not executed his task as well as any man living could have done it. But that these, or that any poetic versions can convey to the mind of the merely general reader the most remote conception of either the manner, the spirit, or the meaning of the Greek dramatists, is what Mr. Potter does not intend us to believe, and what we certainly should not believe if he did. At all events, it must be a subject of general congratulation, that in the present day, for a sum little exceeding three dollars, any lover of the classics may possess himself of complete versions of the three greatest among the ancient Greek writers of tragedy.

Ardent admirers of Hellenic Literature, we have still no passion for Euripides. Truly great when compared with many of the moderns, he falls immeasurably below his immediate predecessors. “He is admirable,”(a) says a German critic, “where the object calls chiefly for emotion, and requires the display of no higher qualities; and he is still more so where pathos and moral beauty are united. Few of his pieces are without particular passages of the most overpowering beauty. It is by no means my intention to deny him the possession of the most astonishing talents: I have only stated that these talents were not united with a mind in which the austerity of moral principle, and the sanctity of religious feelings were held in the highest honor.”

The life, essence, and characteristic qualities of the ancient Greek drama may be found in three things. First, in the ruling idea of Destiny(b) or Fate. Secondly, in the Chorus. Thirdly, in Ideality. But in Euripides we behold only the decline and fall of that drama, and the three prevailing features we have mentioned are in him barely distinguishable, or to be seen only in their perversion. What, for example is, with Sophocles, and still more especially with Æschylus, the obscure and terrible spirit of predestination, sometimes mellowed down towards the catastrophe of their dramas into the unseen, yet not unfelt hand of a kind Providence, or overruling God, becomes in the handling of Euripides the mere blindness of accident, or the capriciousness of chance. He thus loses innumerable opportunities — opportunities which his great rivals have used to so good an effect — of giving a preternatural and ideal elevation to moral fortitude in the person of his heroes, by means of opposing them in a perpetual warfare with the arbitrations and terrors of Destiny.

Again; the Chorus, which appears never to have been thoroughly understood by the moderns — the Chorus of Euripides is not, alas! the Chorus of his predecessors. That this singular, or at least apparently singular feature, in the Greek drama, was intended for the mere purpose of preventing the stage from being, at [page 40:] any moment entirely empty, has been an opinion very generally, and very unaccountably received. The Chorus was not, at any time, upon the stage. Its general station was in the orchestra, in which it also performed the solemn dances, and walked to and fro during the choral songs. And when it did not sing, its proper station was upon the thymele, an elevation somewhat like an altar, but with steps, in front of the orchestra, raised as high as the stage, and opposite to the scene — being also in the very centre of the entire theatre, and serving as a point around which the semi-circle of the amphitheatre was described.(c) Most critics, however, have merely laughed at the Chorus as something superfluous and absurd, urging the folly of enacting passages supposed to be performed in secret in the presence of an assembled crowd, and believing that as it originated in the infancy of the art, it was continued merely through caprice or accident. Sophocles, however, wrote a treatise on the Chorus, and assigned his reasons for persisting in the practice. Aristotle says little about it, and that little affords no clew to its actual meaning or purpose. Horace considers it “a general expression of moral participation, instruction, and admonition;” and this opinion, which is evidently just, has been adopted and commented upon, at some length, by Schlegel.(c1) Publicity among the Greeks, with their republican habits and modes of thinking, was considered absolutely essential to all actions of dignity or importance. Their dramatic poetry imbibed the sentiment, and was thus made to display a spirit of conscious independence.(c2) The Chorus served to give verisimilitude to the dramatic action, and was, in a word, the ideal spectator. It stood in lieu of the national spirit, and represented the general participation of the human race, in the events going forward upon the stage. This was its most extended, and most proper object; but it had others of a less elevated nature, and more nearly in accordance with the spirit of our own melo-drama.(d)

But the Chorus of Euripides was not the true and unadulterated Chorus of the purer Greek tragedy. It is even more than probable that he did never rightly appreciate its full excellence and power, or give it any portion of his serious attention. He made no scruple of admitting the parabasis into his tragedies* — a license which although well suited to the spirit of comedy, was entirely out of place, and must have had a ludicrous effect in a serious drama. In some instances also, among which we may mention the Danaidae, a female Chorus is permitted by him to make use of grammatical inflexions proper only for males.

In respect to the Ideality of the Greek drama, a few words will be sufficient. It was the Ideality of conception, and the Ideality of representation. Character and manners were never the character and manners of every day existence, but a certain, and very marked elevation above them. Dignity and grandeur enveloped each personage of the stage — but such dignity as comported with his particular station, and such grandeur as was never at outrance with his allotted part. And this was the Ideality of conception. The cothurnus, the mask, the mass of drapery, all so constructed and arranged as to give an increase of bodily size, the scenic illusions of a nature very different, and much more extensive than our own,(e) inasmuch as actual realities were called in to the aid of art, were on the other hand the Ideality of [column 2:] representation. But although in Sophocles, and more especially in Æschylus, character and expression were made subservient and secondary to this ideal and lofty elevation — in Euripides the reverse is always found to be the case. His heroes are introduced familiarly to the spectators, and so far from raising his men to the elevation of Divinities, his Divinities are very generally lowered to the most degrading and filthy common-places of an earthly existence. But we may sum up our opinion of Euripides far better in the words of Augustus William Schlegel, than in any farther observations of our own.

♒ 6 ♒

The Early Naval History of England. By Robert Southey,(a) L. L. D. Poet Laureate. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard. The early naval history of England, and by so fine a writer as Southey undoubtedly is, either in poetry or prose, but more especially in the latter, cannot fail of exciting a lively interest among readers of every class. In the subject matter of this work we, as Americans, have moreover a particular feeling, for it has been often remarked that in no national characteristic do we bear a closer analogy to our progenitors in Great Britain than in the magnificence and glory of our many triumphs both over and upon the sea. To those who know Southey well, and we sincerely hope there are not a few of our readers who do know him intimately, through the medium of his writings at least, we shall be under no necessity of giving any assurance that the History of which we are now speaking, is a work of no common merit, and worthy of all their attention. Southey is a writer who has few equals any where, either in purity of truly English prose, or in melody of immortal verse. He is great in every department of Literature which he has attempted. And even did we feel inclined at present, with his very happily executed Naval History before us, to quarrel with some of his too zealous friends for overrating his merely poetical abilities, we could not find it in our hearts to place him second to any one — no, not to our own noble Irving in —— we will not use the term classical, but prefer repeating our former expression — in truly English, undefiled,(b) vigorous, and masculine prose. Yet this the North American Review has ventured to do, not having, we think, before its eyes the fear(c) of flat and positive contradiction from all authorities whose opinions are entitled to consideration. Comparisons of this nature, moreover, rarely fail of appearing, even although they really be not, invidious; and in the present instance we are really aware of no reason, or rather of no possibility for juxta-position.(d) There are no points of approximation between Irving and Southey, and they cannot be compared. Why not say at once, for it could be said as wisely, and as satisfactorily, that Dante's verse is superior to that of Metastasio — that the Latin of Erasmus [page 41:] is better than the Latin of Buchanan — that Bolingbroke is a finer prose writer than Horne Tooke, or coming home to our own times, that Tom Moore is to be preferred to Lord Brougham,(e) and the style of N. P. Willis to the style of John Neal? We mean to deal, therefore, in generalities, when we disagree with Mr. Everett(f) in what he has advanced. Irving is not a better prose writer than Southey. We know of no one who is. In saying thus much we do not fear being accused of a deficiency in patriotic feeling. No true(g) — we mean no sensible American will like a bad book the better for being American, and on the other hand no sensible man of any country, who pretends to even common freedom from prejudice, will esteem such a work as the Naval History of Great Britain the less for being written by a denizen of any region under the sun.

♒ 7 ♒

The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present for 1836. Edited by Miss Leslie. Philadelphia: E. L. Carey and A. Hart. — We are really sorry that we have no opportunity of noticing this beautiful little Annual at length, and article by article, in our present number: and this the more especially as the edition is even now [column 2:] nearly exhausted, and it will be hardly worth while to say any thing concerning the work in our next, by which time we are very sure there will not be a copy to be obtained at any price. The Gift is highly creditable to the enterprise of its publishers, and more so to the taste and talents of Miss Leslie.(a) This we say positively — the ill-mannered and worse-natured opinion(b) of the Boston Courier to the contrary notwithstanding.(c) Never had Annual a brighter galaxy of illustrious literary names in its table of contents — and in no instance has any contributor fallen below his or her general reputation. The embellishments are not all of a high order of excellence. The Orphans, for example, engraved by Thomas B. Welch from a painting by J. Wood, is hard and scratchy in manner, and altogether unworthy of the book — while the head of the child in the Prawn Fishers, engraved by A. W. Graham from a painting by W. Collins, R. A. has every appearance of a cabbage. But the portrait of Fanny Kemble by Cheney, from Sully,(d) is one of the finest things in the world, notwithstanding a certain wiriness above the hair. The likeness is admirable — the attitude exquisite — and the countenance is beaming all over with intelligence. The gem of the book, however, is the Smuggler's Repose, engraved by W. E. Tucker from a painting by J. Tennant. We repeat it, this is absolutely a gem — such as any Souvenir in any country might be proud to possess, and sufficient of itself to stamp a high character upon the Gift.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 40, column 1:]

*  The parabasis was the privilege granted the Chorus of addressing the spectators in its own person.