SYDENHAM.*
Trim is not a novel, though it appears in that shape. There is no story ; and though there are many characters, they have as little connection with each other as the figures on the slides of a magic- lantern. The style is lively, but the writer fails in his exhibitions of the witty and the fanciful. In the account of a dinner at the Beef Steak Club, his jocularity is heavy and forced : his picture of SHERI- DAN (we suppose it iS'SHERIDAN he means by Singleton) no more resembles the brilliant original than the chop-fallen skull on which Hamlet moralized, did the Yorick who set the table in a roar. And the poet, whom he introduces to his readers with much preparatory ceremony, differs neither in his language nor his actions from five hundred Cockneys who indite rhymes to "dumpling," and set up for men of sensibility. The point of his satire turns not unfrequently on vulgar and commonplace incidents, culled not from nature, but from the Minerva press. At a watering-place, he is requested to dine with a small poet, who, we are told, incites every stranger that happens to alight at a certain inn to participate in his hospitality (a piece of folly. which no poet, great or small, was ever guilty of); and the notable jest is the spoiling of a roasted hare by a blundering cook, which puts the host and hostess into "such a quandary !" We have said we suppose the author means SHERIDAN by Single- ton, for really we ares not sure. There are a number of persons in- troduced in the course of the three volumes, about whose identity we feel the same doubts. The author, we learn from Mr. COLEURNS advertisements, has been accused of personality; but from this crime we must vindicate him. Were it not that there is an awkward attempt at letting us into the secret by some resemblance of the name, or by connecting it with some place or office notoriously held by the person intended to be portrayed, we should never imagine for a moment that the sketches were not purely ideal. Even in those which we presume are meant to be taken as such, there is often a sad departure from truth and consistency. We have a perfect gentleman, as we are told, in a certain Mr. Paula.. This Mr. Paulet invites the hero to dine with him; and, by way of showing how perfect gentlemen entertain their acquaintances, one of the partie quartie at Mr. Paulet's table is an Eton lad of sixteen, who gets beastly drunk and pukes in the room ! In the country, he is introduced by his mother to a paragon of another Species, a Mr. Mitchel, a young clergyman remarkable for the modesty of his disposition and the rigid- correctness of his general behaviour. .Dinner is cleared away, and this old woman's saint begins, without in- troduction or encouragement, to swear like a trooner, and talk ob- scenely to an absolute stranger! The secret of this nonsense lies in the theory on which the book is constructed. The author sets out on the old hackneyed hypothesis'of ROCHEFOUCAULD, that all the actions of human nature are referable
• Sydenham; or Memoirs of a Man of the World. 3 vols. London, 1830.
to selfishness—or, as he would read it, to scoundrelism ; that every woman who says an amiable thing to or of a young man, has a design to secure him for herself or her daughter ; that every man who seeks your acquaintance is influenced by a desire of picking your pocket. As the French Pessimist, in the proof of his theory, is content to dispense with every rule of logic, so Sydenham, in his rage for exhibitinc, its i workings, s content to despise every manifestation of nature. exhibiting anecdotes of real persons which he has picked up are below the range of the ingenious caterers for the daily newspapers, who measure the results of their industrious researches by the line. It may be imagined that we have now said as much ill of this book as we well can, and that we have a low opinion of its author. This is a double inistake. We could say much more against the book ; and of the author we have not a low opinion, but a very high one. We think him a decidedly clever, clear-headed, shrewd, observant person. Were he to turn his observation to its proper purpose,—were he, in depicting character, to pursue the inductive form of reasoning, instead of coming to the study of mankind with a cut and dry hypothesis of human nature in his hand,—we hardly know any candidate at present before the public that bids fairer to produce a really good tale of man- ners. The sketches which he gives in the present work of his father and mother are admirable. We question if the pencil of CRUIKSHANK could equal the following—it is the P. S. of a long, condemnatory, re- ligious letter from Lady Sydenham to her son, who is involved in a charge of crim. con. with a demirep of quality. " The damages will, I dare say, be immense. What money thrown away ! "—There are numerous passages scattered over the first volume, and the first half of the second volume (which are decidedly the best parts of the work), that show the author quite capable, if he would give fair play to his powers, of describing character truly and graphically. But it is in the shrewdness of his general observations that his talent chiefly shines. Take his remarks on a.,..p_ublic school for an example.
" I was deeply impressed by the unamiable character of the boys : regard- ing the general colour of their society, and not individual instances, I saw that its leading features were insolence and injustice, brutality and baseness. Those who ipossessed the advantages of years and physical strength, ty- rannized over the young and feeble, who, in the various methods which they employed to guard against, or conciliate their tyrants, exhibited the same mean and contemptible spirit. The ingenious secured their exemption from maltreatment by performing the tasks of their less-gifted superiors; others eluded abuse by flattery and submission ; and even the more bold, who ven- tured to disobey, or yielded unwillingly, were moved only by the more impa- tient desire of obtaining that power against which they remonstrated, and exercising it in the manner which they resisted when practised upon them- selves.
"These observations suggested to my mind reflections which a lad of six- teen is seldom capable of entertaining. Here,' said 1, mentally, ' I see hu- man nature, unrestrained by artificial regulations, nakedly exposed; here I see its real qualities, constitution, and tendencies : the raw material, from which the lords of the creation are moulded, is before me. Is it possible to suppose that, however Nature may be compressed and modified, she will not retain all the principal points of her original shape ? Am I to believe that Nature can be radically altered by any process which it may undergo ? This school is a miniature of the world; and in it I can distinguish the germs of all that iniquity with which its great archetype is said -to abound. What manner of world must that be which is composed of characters of which these boys are embryos? Can there be distributive justice in such a world ?' " The above contains the germ of that theory which it is the object of the book to develope and exemplify. Sydenham the elder's desciip- lion of the qualifications of a statesman, is a piece of fine satire on that class of worthies, as well as a humorous elucidation of the character of him that gives it. " What I intend that you should do, is to spend a couple of years abroad. An acquaintance with foreign courts is a considerable advantage to a gentle-. man entering upon public life ; it also finishes his manners, and I think it quite necessary that he should get up some particular information to qualify him for public business. He should look into history, for instance,—by the by, have you read the History of England?
"To this question I was able to answer in the affirmative.
" Very well ; now you may as well glance through the general history of Europe, which will do to begin with, for it will enable you to speak of" fo- reign policy," and "our foreign relations ;" and after you have skimmed through the Annual Register, and a few pamphlets, with which I shall supply you, you will be pretty well versed in politics. I am sure Pitt knew no more when he first came into Parliament. The details of politics and the tone of the House you will pick-up in a couple of sessions. As for particular sub- jects, which you may wish to discuss, you must cram for them in the usual manner. Nothing is easier ; I will give you an instance. Lord F., soon after his appointment to the India Board, was obliged to lead the debate for Go- vernment upon an important question relative to that department ; and so little did he know about it, that he commenced his preparations for the oc- casion by looking in the map to find where India was. Ay—you may laugh, but I promise you he succeeded to admiration. And why ?—he was a clever young man, and understood the style in which these things are to be done.'
Them are many things as good as this, and some perhaps better. Now for one word of advice to the author of Sydenham. if he will emulate the poor reputation of those wishy-washy authorlinp.s who seek to give extrinsic value to their drivel by mixing up real dia- meters with fictitious ones, let him, for Heaven's sake, learn some- thing of the history and manners of the people he means to misrepre- sent. The faculty of caricaturing is an exceedingly cheap and common one in its best exhibitions ; but a caricature, where the language is un- intelligible and the likeness untraceable, is the ne plus ultra of inane absurdity.
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