BOOKS.

CALVERLEY.* Ii' the death of Calverley did not eclipse the gaiety of nations," it has at least "diminished the stock of harmless pleasures" for the English-speaking race. The best-pa.rodyist, probably, that has ever been seen—certainly the best in verse—and an unsur- , passed translator, whether from Latin to his mother-tongue or

from his mother-tongue to Latin, Calverley had earned for him- self a peculiar and distinctive niche in the Temple of Letters. His position in literature is not the highest. It is not one that can possibly be of' enduring fame ; or rather, the endurance of his fame depends, upon that of others. If Tennyson and Browning are forgotten, Calverley must be forgotten too' Already, perhaps, the fading fame of Jean Ingelow is making that best of all parodies, " Oh, love my Willie," grow :obscure. The more reason, therefore, to be thankful to the publishers and the editor' for collecting Calverley's disjecta membra and enabling us to pick them while they are still fresh. The present volume contains a collection of Calverley's earliest efforts, prize poems, and transla- tions, a couple of papers which he wrote on the art of translation, and a memoir by Mr. W. J. Sendal). The memoir, which has already appeared in a magazine, is, perhaps, a little disappointing. There is a little too much talk about the man and too little told us of the man. As in some novels, we are continually being informed of the hero or heroine's sparkling wit in repartee, but have to take it on trust, as their conversa- tions are not reported, so it is with Calverley. With the exception of the Dean of Gloucester, who gives information 'about Calverley's school-days at Harrow, Mr. Sendall, Professor Seeley, and Mr. Besant, all speak rather to his reputation for ,wit and humour at the University and afterwards than give specimens of it. It may be that his wit and humour were of-a kind that hardly bear reproduction ; but the specimens of them already given to the world do not give colour to this explanation. On the contrary, they bear being looked at out of their setting more than most of the jeucc d'esprit, even of world-famous wits like Talleyrand. For instance, it does not take long to tell the admirable mot, after his own peculiar method of parody, on Mr. James Payn, which the subject of it has already told us in "some literary, recollections," how Calverley was walking with him and others in the Lakes, when Payn complained of the pace, and Calverley replied, "The labour we delight in physics Payn." What, again, could be easier told than his undergraduate answers to the pompons Master of Balliol (we need hardly say not the present one) :— "With what feelings, Mr. Blayds, ought we to regard the Decalogue ?" Calverley, or Blayds as he then was, not being strong in theology, replied, "Master, with feelings of devotion mingled with awe !" Or, again, dogs being prohibited in College, when the Master accosted him, while he had what Mr. Senclen calls "a tawny, nondescript treasure" trotting at his heels, with "What; another dog, Mr. Blayds P" and he answered, "Master, they do tell me that some peoplethink it is a squirrel." Perhaps, though, for ready wit few things can equal the earliest performance recorded of him at Harrow, though this again, being in the parody line, has perhaps already lost some of its savour. The form were being examined in the first letter in that pompous * Literary Remains of Charles Stuart Calverley. With a Memoir. By Waiter J. Sendall. London: George Bell and Bona. 1865. produotion, Russell's Modern Europe, and the question asked was, "How did the Gothic leaders conduct themselves in Italy P" and he promptly replied, "They hunted the bear on the voluptuous parterre, the trim garden and expensive pleasure. ground, where effeminacy was wont to saunter or indolence to loll." But best of all were the two epigrams, only the latter of which is due to Calverley, which, for sharpness in subject and style, more than rival the famous epigram and antiphone on the conduct of George I. to the rival Universities. We hardly think Mr. Sendall has quite the right version of the story ; but as he tells it, the Master of Balliol had just been admitting Blayds as a scholar, and noticing that he had been recently indulging in the herb nicotiana, to which he had a strong objection, remarked to one of the fellows, "Why, the young man is redolent of the weed even now." On this a College wit wrote

on a wall :—

'• 0 freshman, running fast to seed,

0 scholar, redolent of the weed, This motto in thy meerschaum put, The sharpest Blayds will soonest cut."

To which Blayds under-wrote :— "Your wit, sir, 's tolerable, but The case you understand ill ;

Our Dons would like their Blayds to cut, But cannot find a handle."

Now, it may be said that the fact that all these anecdotes are garnered from these pages shows that our complaint is ill-founded, and that Mr. Sendall and the other contributors have not merely reported, but supported, Calverley's reputation as a wit. But, as a matter of fact, all these stories concern Calverley's Harrow and Oxford days, before he was known to Mr. Sendall and the others, and, with the exception of Dean Butler's contribution, had already been published or widely circulated in conversation. Whether this is due to the superior appreciation of wit by Oxonians, cultivators of the softer graces of letters over the worshippers of the sterner science of figures who congregate at Cambridge, or whether, in changing his name from Blayds to Calverley, and his residence from Oxford to Cambridge, the wit himself had undergone obscure- tion, we must leave the rival Universities to determine. The fact remains that, during his short stay at Oxford, many ex- amples of his wit are extant, while of his far longer residence at Cambridge only dim rumours are forthcoming. Mr. Sendall, indeed, thinks that his somewhat stormy career at Oxford had sobered him, and that" Ca.rolus Stuart Blayds e coll. Ball. prope ejectus ") as he wished to record himself in his published Latin prize poem), when he migrated to Christ's, did not wish to risk again the eviction he avoided by his notice to quit, and settled down into a demure scholar. Certain it is that if he did not carry his wit he carried his talents with him, for he performed the unexampled feat of having won the Latin Verse at Oxford in 1851, and at Cambridge in 1853, and again in 1855. But he did not confine himself to Latin. Indeed, his Greek version of "John Anderson, my Jo, John" is, perhaps, the best piece of Greek translation extant. For exactness of rendering, in sense as well as form, reproducing the plaintive simplicity of the original almost word for word, it is unrivalled. Amongst so much that is good it is hard to select the best ; but can anything be better than,— "John Anderson, my Jo, John, I wonder what ye mean To rise so early in the morn, And sit sae late at e'en.

Yell blear out a' your e'e, John,

And why should ye do so ? Gang sooner to your bed at e'en,

John Anderson, my Jo."

As showing how native Calverley's talent was, it may be noted that among the best versions in the book is that of the fable of "The Wolf and the Dog" into Horatian hexameters, done when he was first in the sixth form at Harrow, and barely seventeen years old. The dog explains the mark of the collar On his neck to the wolf asking :— " ' Dic mihi, die qnsem, sum nempe ferocior,' inquiet titque vigil aim nocte ; quiescam lace, catena Alligor ; at nihil eat: gratus sopor iste diurnus Vespers nbique vagor, nullo retinente, per agros Frustra mihi domino lantanne obsonia mensao Per totam prmbente diem—sic absque labore Vita beats fngit."

And the wolf's rejoinder when he is told the dog cannot run away at will

"'AvSnpf5a, cpix' av8pcil v ihaed,r, 6.vacrTas liir'ZpOpoY, elTa vutcrDs ?s tivrdXas a-ypurveis ;

4.8epels ticrere 7' 61.isko

cl)Se apav (lava-yid, ; Ka0 &pay eirrhv 'Apar/2(3a, OA' itybpril Y." to, re meliore potitus, Utere sorts tu no valeas ! me libera semper 2Eva juvant : nocet empta jago, mihi crede, voluptus."

Horace himself could not have done it better.

We feel that Calverley is less happy in his translation from the Greek of the magnificent passage from the Iliad, describing

the Trojan camp by night. Oddly enough, this was done into. English hexameters which, in his paper on the "Art of Trans- lation" re-published here, he emphatically condemns as not truly

representing the rhythm, though it may the scansion, of the Greek or Latin hexameter. As he says, "A Greek line is, in fact, a succession of vowels, separated by consonants introduced sparingly and under such restrictions that it flows on uninter- ruptedly from syllable to syllable. The flow of our English line is generally choked (so to speak) by blocks of consonants thrown in ad libitum ;" and he contrasts the line,— " Silenc'd, but unconvinced, when the story was ended, the black- smith,"— with the first line of the Iliad. Applying the same method, it is impossible not to see that the flowing,— " WC C.' 61" V obpapcp &xi-pa (PCIElliP a4l ITEM11,711, CPIZIPET' apirporea, STE g7rAETO rIC 141:WEV liaaat 07COITLIZI ice! 7rFICLOVES &KM Ka! vassal, obpaY65ey 5' dp' inreppetyri 4crire-ros avOhp sraPra 5e 7' etZerai eto-rpa, 7g77iBe i TE 41136,a

is immeasurably superior to the jaunty jumpiness of,—

" As in the heights of heaven the moon gleams clear, and around her Shine in their beauty the stars, nor is one cloud moving in ether, Shines forth every cliff and the jutting peaks of the headlands, Forest and glen : then, as opens the rifting firmament heavenwards, Star is revealed upon star, and gay is the heart of the herdsman ;""

though that again is infinitely superior to the style of Long- fellow's "Why don't you speak for yourself, John ?" In truth, this very passage is a strong example that Calverley's prin- ciples and later practice were right, when he says,—" Any line which obeys the same laws of euphony as the Greeks and Romans observed resembles and reminds one of their poetry far more than those concatenations of so-called dactyls and spondees which seem to me, even when they seem perfect, to be not so much verses as skeletons of verses." Surely Tennyson had this in his mind when be translated these same lines into that perfect gem of poetry :—

"As when in heaven the stars about the moon Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid And every height comes out and jutting peak, And valley, and the immeasurable heavens Break open to their highest, and the stars Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart."

Many a similar example may be cited from Calverley himself; and when another volume appears, we hope to have the pleasure of citing them again. In the present volume the English trans- lations are hardly up to the same level. A great many of them are translations of Latin hymns, with a good deal of the inevit- able Tate and Brady in them. There are, however, brilliant exceptions ; and the most brilliant is the Easter hymn, " Pan- ditur saxo tumulus remote," in which Calverley has borrowed the metre of Milton's Christmas hymn with splendid success :—

"The stone is rolled away,

The grave is bid display Her secrets ; through her charnel chambers rings A voice, and lo, the dead Lifts his awakened head, Lo the deep hearkens to the King of Kings Thus Death himself, our foe, At last shall be laid low, His chains rent piecemeal and his slaves set free.

That which thy sovereign power Bath wrought, 0 Christ, this hour, Is but an emblem of the things to be."

IC