LIFE IN LONDON.
Life in London ; or, The Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, Esq., and his Elegant Friend, Corinthian Tom, in their Rambles and Sprees through the Metropolis. By Pierce Egan. A New Edition. (Chatto and Windus. as. 6d.)—It is probable that a reprint of the music-hall songs popular in this year of grace, or a reissue of the humorous articles in the Sporting Times, might have an interest for our great-grandchildren, who would read them with a certain tolerance. That is the nearest equivalent we can think of for this literature of Corinthian Tom, Bob Logic, and all the other young bloods whom most of us know vaguely by name in con- nection with Cruikshank's pictures. Still, on re-reading, it is difficult to believe that in 1821 this really was, what the preface declares it to have been, "the most popular work in British literature," though ten years ago the same might have been said of Mr. Jerome's " Three Men in a Boat." Bnt Mr. Jerome &ally has humour of a sort, and Pierce Egan has nothing but the grossest animal spirits. "Harry Lorrequer" told the same sort of stories, rows with watchmen and the rest of it, and made them amusing ; but Lever would have been incapable of Mr. Egan's solemnity, his naïve capitals, his ingenuous italics, his monumental snobbery. The account of Almack's is funny, but with a humour that is purely unconscious ; as for the dedica- tion to George IV., it reads like exquisite irony. Those who, like Mr. Henley, find a full-blooded joy in the aroma of half-forgotten slang—a fragrance like that which Jerry sneezed at when he went to "sport his blunt" on the monkey 'Jacco Maccacco' among the " tyke-boys " at the Westminster Pit—these amateurs will cherish the volume. The rest will hardly care for a curious and overcoloured account of the somewhat blackguardly diver- sions of their progeiitors.
Previous page
