CRITICAL NOTICES.

History of the English Language and Literature; by Robert Chambers; to which is added, a History of American Contributions to the English Language and Literature; by Rev. Royal Robbins. Hartford: Edward Hopkins. 1 vol. pp. 320.

THE American editor of this volume, " REV. ROYAL ROBBINS," (what a glorious alliteration!) commences his preface with some sarcastic remarks upon its English author, Mr. Robert Chambers, because he was either wilfully or really ignorant of the merits of certain celebrated American writers on metaphysics, theology, and philosophy. Mr. Robert Chambers, it seems, saw fit to confer immortality upon no Americans except Franklin, Irving, and Cooper; the first of whom is by the Rev. Royal Robbins (what a river of a name !) distinguished as a great philosopher, the second as a fine prose writer, and the third as an ingenious novelist. We agree with Royal-not irreverently shall we designate the American Editor, sometimes by one and sometimes by another part of his mellifluous cognomen-we agree with Royal, in most particularly blaming Robert for the information concerning our many great men which he has so surreptitiously suppressed and wantonly withheld, (how gracefully we fall into alliteration!) but what must we say of Robbins himself, who, though living in the midst of our host of literrateurs, has most manifestly misjudged many, and notoriously neglected not only those who are equally worthy of notoriety with those whom he has mentioned, but, in many matters, more so? Oh! Reverend Royal Robbins, repent of those sins of omission and commission, which we shall unsparingly signify and point out to thee. Thou sayest in thy book, that this our beloved journal combineth "instruction with amusement." We fear that the latter quality will be found just now predominant; yet if thou wilt carefully peruse the succeeding, thou shalt be made wiser-yea, instructed greatly, in certain points, concerning which thou seemest to be immersed in the profoundest ignorance!

"An Austrian army, awfully arrayed,
Boldly, by battery besieged Belgrade;
Cossack commanders cannonading come,
Dealing destruction's devastating doom," &c.

Knowest thou, Royal, surnamed Robbins, who was the author of those magnificently alliterative verses? Nay, didst thou ever hear the verses before? No! then this is one thing in which thou art already wiser. As they begin, so continue the verses-gliding one after another, in symphonious alliteration as musical as thy name, which might be brought into a line, thus:

Royal Robbins ruminating writes.

VOL. X.

73

The last word is perfect only in sound, but may be tolerated by the example of the country schoolmaster's celebrated toast-"I give you, fellow-citizens," he exclaimed, "the three Rs-Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmetic." We will no longer delay, by thus dilating digressively, but dip directly into our dish.

It is an old adage, "that too many cooks spoil the broth." Now here is very good broth spoiled by only two cooks. The materials were sufficiently abundant to have made soup enough for all the literary poor in the two hemispheres, and not have been very thin either; but with so little skill have these been used, that the liquid in which they have been boiled, seems to be less nutritious than that which is served to the poor in Paris; in which, it is said, that an expert angler might fish for a week without catching a bone.

"A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE!" What an imposing title! What a long tail our cat has got! or rather, how monstrous a head upon how diminutive a body! Think of it-" A history of the English Language and Literature," prefixed to a by no means thick duodecimo of 320 pages! Well— Learning is getting to be made very easy. The royal round has been discovered at last by Royal Robbins. The discovery of the application of Electro-Magnetic power to Rotary motion is nothing to it. We shall be carried, by even a swifter agent than steam, into learning, at this rate. Two other names are henceforth to be added to the two, to whom the English and American nations have so much cause to be grateful. Let us rejoice, even more than at the late glorious Whig victory, that one of these is borne by a fellow countryman. Robert Chambers and Royal Robbins, coadjutors in the important task of reducing a History of the English Language and Literature to 320 duodecimo pages, your names shall be inscribed beneath those of Charles Knight, original plotter of all the works for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and Samuel G. Goodrich, real-though with the diffidence inseparable from true merit unavowed—author of Peter Parley's Tales! Already, through the unwearied and never-to-be-too-much commended exertions of the first of these last-named gentlemen has the world of English literature beheld knowledge diffused into its remotest corners. Through his agency, have the abstruse technicalities of Science become as familiar as household words in and about Wapping and the Five Points, and the recondite speculations of Philosophy been made "as easy as lying" to the elegant purveyors of fish in Billingsgate and the Hook. Already, through the indefatigable and disinterested labors of the last-named Philoprogenitive author, have not only History and Geography becorie mere playthings to the intellects of children, and Mineralogy and Conchology simple studies, but Mathematics have been mastered, and it is contemplated to reduce Sir Isaac Newton's Principia to dimensions suitable for the juvenile grasp, and to simplify to the infantile understanding the whole mystery of Fluxions. Yet, stupendous as the accomplishments of these two authors may be considered, they must pale their renown before that of a Chambers and a Robbins. A History of English Literature! Why, we once thought of giving a course of Twelve Lectures, to set forth some hints for a plan of such a work, which, as we thought, should be commenced by a ripe scholar at the age of thirty, and continued till his death :-bequeathed by him to another equally capable, it was to be continued till his death; by him surrendered to still another, and so on, it was to make slow and magnificent progress, till completed by the twenty-fourth man. Each was to spend his whole life in the task, each was to write but one volume, and there were to be but twenty-four volumes. From the small work before us, prepared by only two pair of hands, we perceive that an attempt has been made to compress all this world of labor into a nut-shell. If the attempt be a successful one, what praise is not due to the projectors !

Let us see what has been done; and without descending too minutely into particulars, which our space will not allow, let us look at the respective labors of this Beaumont and Fletcher of Literary History. It appears, as we have remarked, that Royal Robbins (how we dote on that alliteration!) pokes Robert Chambers in the ribs about his neglect of American authors. He might have had "a smarter chance" of finding fault with his literary brother, if he had observed that Mr. Chambers's ignorance is by no means confined to the domain of American letters. From "the venerable Bede" down to Mr. Robert Chambers himself whom he modestly commemorates as having been associated with his brother Mr. William Chambers in the conducting of" a periodical sheet of original and select literature, entitled Chambers's Edinburgh Journal," in which a quantity of matter equal to that contained in a number of the Library of Useful Knowledge, was offered at a fourth of the price,--there occur many omissions of names not altogether unknown to Fame, though unrevealed to such babes as himself. There are also omissions of facts as well as of names, which are in many cases judiciously interpolated by the American Editor, and of which he takes care to preserve the credit by placing them, like patches of blue sky, between stars, and, after having alluded to the manner of designation in his preface, noting the same at the bottom of each page. These interpolations, though made in the` compressed and unsatisfactory style of the original work, are not without their value, and display a degree of information, of which Mr. Chambers, through inadvertent haste or a carelessness of research, did not possess himself.

The book is divided into five periods. Very curt and meagre are the notices of the fathers of English Literature; and the observations made upon their works evidently emanate from a common-place mind, incapable of appreciating their quaint beauties and rare conceits. Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia is called "dull and antiquated"-a regret is expressed that three more cantos of the twelve which are all that are left to us of Spenser's Faery Queen, had not perished with the six last, said to have been lost by the servant to whose care they were entrusted to be conveyed from Ireland to England,—and of Donne and his followers it is remarked that, though" possessed of many of the highest requisites of poetry, they were misled by learning and false taste into such extravagances, both of idea and language, as rendered all their latter qualities useless." The standard by which judgments like these were formed, must have been entirely modern, and modern in the most hum-drum sense of the word. To rightly criticise the productions of an early age, it is requisite that the critic should, by long and accurate contemplation of its peculiarities, be able to transport himself into its customs, and modes of thought and appreciation, and thus be enabled to determine on beauties or faults of style, as they appeared to cotemporaries, and not to a generation existing upon a stage which exhibits few vestiges of the intellectual habits of its former occupants.

Besides his lack of critical acumen, there is sometimes a degree of simplicity in Mr. Chambers's observations, which are positively humorous. In concluding his notice of Lord Bacon, which, like most of the other notices, is short but not sweet, he sagaciously remarks, "It was the opinion of Bacon, that knowledge was the same as power. His own life unfortunately showed that there might be great knowledge without power. Subsequent philosophers have agreed that knowledge is what Bacon described it, only when combined with moral excellence, which, though apt to be favored and improved by knowledge, is not always found in its company." Comment on so shrewd an observation is altogether unnecessary. It is of a piece with the genera! staple of our author's philosophical reflections. In speaking of Milton, he objects to "considerable portions" of Paradise Lostin which "the poet may be said to have fallen short of his design-" that "sublime as his images are, and lofty the strain of his sentiments, still his heaven is

only a more magnificent kind of earth, and his most exalted supernatural beings only a nobler order of men." If by "exalted supernatural beings" be intended the angels, no higher compliment could be paid to the poet, for man is said by Scripture to have been made "only a little lower than the angels." It is very fair logic, then, to conclude, that the angels are only a little higher than man.

But, while we smile at the general scope and design of the work as inefficient to convey the instruction intended, let us not fail to do justice to those parts which seem to be prepared with a care and discrimination, which would, if equally observed throughout, have rendered the labors of Mr. Chambers acceptable to the public. The extracts, presented as illustrations of the manner of certain authors, infrequent as they are, and invidious as the selection must have been, are made with good taste. As an instance of this fact take the following verses, designed to show the "exquisite beauty" which sometimes blooms amidst "the sorry writing" of Andrew Marvell:

THE NYMPH'S DESCRIPTION OF HER FAWN.

"With sweetest milk, and sugar, first
I it at my own fingers nurs'd;
And as it grew so every day

It wax'd more white and sweet than they.

It had so sweet a breath! and oft

I blush'd to see its foot more soft,

And white, shall I say? than my hand-
Than any lady's of the land!

"It was a wondrous thing how fleet
'Twas on those little silver feet.
With what a pretty skipping grace
It oft would challenge me the race;
And when 't had left me far away,
"Twould stay, and run again, and stay.
For it was nimbler much than hinds,
And trod as if on the four winds.

"I have a little garden of my own,
But so with roses overgrown,
And lilies, that you would it guess
To be a little wilderness;

And all the spring time of the year
It loved only to be there.

Among the beds of lilies I

Have sought it oft, where it should lie;

Yet could not, till itself would rise,
Find it although before mine eyes;
For in the flaxen lilies' shade,
It like a bank of lilies laid.
Upon the roses it would feed,
Until its lips ev'n seem'd to bleed;
And then to me 't would boldly trip,
And print those roses on my lip.
But all its chief delight was still
On roses thus itself to fill;
And its pure virgin limbs to fold

In whitest sheets of lilies cold.

Had it liv'd long, it would have been

Lilies without-roses within."

The observations on Dryden and the poetical machinists of his time, are very well made. They are so felicitous, that they seem to have emanated from a

fresh mind. Take this comparison between the writers of that day and the class of "drinkers from the old well of English undefiled" by whom they had been preceded :

"The difference between the style of versification here exemplified, and that which flourished in earlier times, cannot fail to be remarked. The poets antecedent to the Commonwealth, especially Spenser, Shakspeare, Drayton, and the dramatists of the reign of James I., uttered sentiments, described characters, and painted external nature, with a luxuriant negligence and freedom, occasionally giving way to coarseness and conceit, and though apparently unable at any time to perceive when they were writing effectively or otherwise, they were always easy, and frequently very happy. They formed nothing like what is called a school of writers, for they had hardly any rules to be acquired. The Commonwealth, with its religious and political troubles, may be said to have put an end to this class of poets. Those who sprung up in the ensuing period, studied as their model the stately and regular versification that prevailed in France, to which they were introduced by the adherents of the court, who had endured a long exile in that country. This new method was introduced with the imposing character of the style of civilized Europe, as regulated by most authoritative rules of antiquity, while the old English manner, which had no followers on the Continent, was regarded as something too homely for polished society. Tenderness and fancy were now exchanged for satire and sophistry; lines, rugged perhaps, but sparkling with rich thought, and melting with genuine feeling, gave place to smooth, accurate, monotonous epic couplets, in which the authors would have been ashamed to display any profound sentiment, or any idea of startling novelty. The very subjects of poetry were now essentially different from what they had been. The new order of writers, men of scholarly education, and accustomed to live in fashionable society, applied themselves to describe the artificial world of manners, to flatter or satirize their contemporaries; or, if they at times ventured upon any thing connected with rural nature, it was not till they had disguised it under a set of cold, lifeless images, borrowed from the pastorals of antiquity. The nymphs and swains of this class of poets, were like the nymphs and swains of a masquerade, well-bred people dressed in good clothes, rather fancifully made. The former were Delias, or Cloes, or Corinnas; the latter Damons, or Strephons, or Cymons. They might have the crook or the milk-pail in their hands, but they had not human nature in their hearts, nor its language upon their tongues. The most lively and poetical objects had to submit to a colder kind of nomenclature at the hands of these poets. The sun obtained the classic appellation of Phoebus. The flowers could not be alluded to otherwise than as the offspring of the goddess Flora; the north-wind was personified under the doubly freezing epithet of Boreas; and a voyage could not be performed, unless by special favor of Neptune and his Tritons."

The period of letters-ranked as the fourth, and extending from 1649 to 1689-is much better managed than those which precede or those which follow it in our duodecimo. In treating of the writers of the fifth period, Mr. Robert Chambers falls once more into child-like naivété. Of Pope, he says:--"In his early years he had much intercourse with a Mr. Cromwell, who is described as having been a mixture of the pedant and the beau; and from this individual he acquired many habits of thinking and expression by no means amiable,—in particular, a sarcastic way of treating the female sex." If such criticism is not funny, we know not what is. It reminds us of a friend of ours, who never could understand an ironical remark. Tell him that the moon was made of green cheese, and he would not credit the absurdity--not he! Speaking of one of the great writers of a former age, Mr. Chambers calls him a person of "uncommon talent." He must have been the inan who declared, in conversation, "Goldsmith is a pretty poet." To show that Mr. Pope's sarcasm on the female sex was not altogether undeserved, we will relate an observation made by one of the fair to ourselves, not dissimilar in simplicity to those of Mr. Chambers. We were quoting from Milton the beautiful passage ending,