THE SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.
WE are preparing some new shelves; covering recesses with re- ceptacles for literature, and opening fresh means of entertainment - for the quartos and octavos of the winter yet unborn. The re- commencement of the publishing season has crowded our apart- ment with candidates for admission to our LIBRARY. GIBBON observed of his splendid collection of books, that he could safely say that none had been put upon his shelves without due exam-, nation. We, much smaller folk, can say of our not contemptible stock, that we have never promoted a single volume to that ho- nourable post without having not only perused but reviewed it ! When we look around, we are lost in astonishment at the mass of print, to say the least, that, in a course of several years of critical inquiry, must have passed under our eyes. What a mass!—opi- nion, fiction, and fact—the sight is appalling. If an Old Bailey Judge should by some strange preternatural process be suddenly set before an assemblage of the ghosts of all those he had ever condemned to death, how great would be his shock ! Our feelings would be very different ; for we flatter ourselves that our good word has cheered the heart of many a young author ; and certain we are that if a severe one has ever been uttered, it has always been unaccompanied by ill-nature, though it may have been dic- tated by honest indignation. No—the souls of the books we have judged smile upon us. We have promoted numbers of them to honourable places in the public estimation • in all cases we have given them full credit for the merit they had ; and when they had but little, we have made the most of it. At all events, we have given them a place in our library by the side of those Am ages have agreed to honour, and where it is some credit to be placed,— for we make a great distinction between those we honour with the shelf (it is equivalent to a croir), and those we send in bales to gather dust in the garrets above, or to cover pickles and light fires in the realms beneath.
But now to the claimants for admission into our sanctum—large and small—white, black, and grey. The, table is strewn with them : the brown paper packets gape upon every chair ; our cow. lean de cabinet is utterly worn away with laying open their several pretensions to the light of day.
The first who takes his place at the bar of criticism is GIOVANNI FINATI, alias HADJEE MAHOMET—an Italian by birth, a deserter from the French army of NAPOLEON, a deserter from the service of an Albanian Paella, and the seducer of the gentle Fatima ; a sol- dier of the Egyptian Viceroy, and lately cicerone, guide, and in- terpreter of the wealthy milordos who go to scatter gold among the sands of Egypt ; a renegade from his faith ; a Turk only in tur- ban, and withal an honest, civil fellow. He has written, or rather dictated, a sketch of his life. The book is edited by and dedicated to WILLIAM JOHN BANKES, Esq. MAHOMET was this gentleman's interpreter in his Egyptian travels, and has described his master's proceedings at length ; so that this book is in fact .the history of WILLIAM JOHN. BANKES in Egypt, edited by himself and dedi- cated to himself. GIOVANNI FINATI does, however, come in for a part of his own book : he gives a pretty intelligible history of his early life, and of his service against the Wahabees. This portion of the volume is curious, rather because we are, possessed of but little information on the subject, than from any merit in the mane ner of the narrator; for in truth, with all the advantage of having kept Mr. BANKES'S company so long, we cannot help thinking GIOVANNI but a dull dog. The least pleasant part of the story is undoubtedly the history of Mr. BANKES'S great achievements in Egypt. The prompter pulls the wire of the puppet behind the curtain far too plainly. Nevertheless, though GIOVANNI FINATI May not be a very new or a very ingenious performance, it con- tains some solid information, and may take its place. It is an avant courrier of Mr. BANKES S own great work, which i,s never to ap- pear. We remember a story of Marshal VILLARS, who, when he attended a conference within the tent of the opposing general, had himself announced every ten minutes by fifteen successive order,- lies. "Marshal VILLARS is coming !"—Again, " Marshal VIL+ L ARS is coming!" in a louder tone—and again—and again. So of Mr. BANKES'S book—it is coming!—it is coming!—and we wait the advent of Bankes Egyptiaca. He spared no expense, and we have no doubt his collections are valuable ; but, unluckily, he thinks nobody but himself can make collections, travel, draw, or write.
Next comes JOHN PINKERTON, the antiquary, and his Corre- spondence. JOHN PINKERTON is described as "a very little and a. very thin old man, with a very small, sharp, yellow face, thickly pitted with the smallpox, and decked with a pair of green specta- cles." Here is a figure for a library ! Poor and petulant Josue PINKERTON, what a sad history is thine ! Industry, learning, acuteness, are but a poor compensation for a wrathful tempera- ment, fiery vanity, irregularity, and pride. With the best hopes, and with great early success, PINKERTON sank into a poor, hard working, complaining bookseller's hack. These volumes of Cor- respondence are neither curious nor entertaining in general; but they contain numerous literary anecdotes, and some very interest:- ing letters. GODWIN'S letter in answer to some angry note of PINKERTON'S iS a beautiful piece of cosnposition..JOHN ALLEN'S, on. a similar occasion, is an admirable specimen of that coolness and ease that accompany the sense of power and superiority. It is: what is vulgarly called ajloorer. No wonder that the.Edinburgh. Review produced the -great effect it did, when supportecrby such writers. HORACE ViraLpor.E's letters are always beyond praise, and there are several here. The letters of Mr. GEORGE DEMP- STER, a Seotchman, and whilom an M.P.—" honest GEORGE," as they used to call him in the North country—are the most familiar and easy of the whole set. He appears to have been a merry old Whig. His address to PINKERTON' is a characteristic description of the testy antiquary—" Three years prisoner in France ! geogra- pher and historiographer of the rest of the planet ! rummager into the rubbish of Scotch trash !—I long much to meet thee." Amongst other curious matter in DEMPSTER'S letters, we de- ' tect the following passage concerning Whiggery, which will serve as food for reflection at this particular moment.
" You will find much comfort in adhering to your true Whig princi- ples, because they are founded in reason, and, thank Heaven, are become at length fashionable in Europe. I fear, however, it will always be a Tory party that will govern Great Britain : the executive Government seems of right to belong to Tories : the legislative and controlling part to the Whigs ; for a true Whig is not in his true element, unless in a situa- tion of independency, to watch and censure even his own brother, be- come a minister. All the Whigs, who in my time have departed from the watching system, have died dispirited and broken-hearted ; for I doubt if kings have found an adequate recompense for the misery of thinking right, and from servilely speaking and voting wrong."
DEMPSTER tells us that Dr. JOHNSON lived many years in Lon- don for 301. a year : he once heard him detail the system and style of life. Put up PINKERTON's Correspondence, by all means. If it were his life, we should say, place him next to RITSON; as it is, let him have room by the side of Nicams's Literary Anecdotes. Peace to thy manes, PINKERTON the cantankerous! Honour to thy editor ! Mr. DAWSON TURNER is a credit to his province. TURNBULL'S History of the Paris Revolution ought, by its bulk, to be a standard work ; but we fear that it must be sent down to the kitchen, instead of to posterity. Every history of the Three Days, in four hundred and fifty pages, must necessarily be stuffed with lies. An antidote to a good deal of the stuff which has appeared concerning this remarkable event, is contained in a pamphlet published by MURRAY, called Military Events of the late French Revolution, or an Account of the Conduct of the Royal Guard on that occasion; by a Staff Officer of the Guards. This is an invaluable document : this is historical: it is the first piece of calm and steady truth we have seen on the subject. Truth is known to be truth at first sight—the goddess is not to be imitated —by her very gait she is known. After all the bombast about this really great and noble event, the present pamphlet comes like _the sun out of a cloud, or the sight of a field of battle when-the wind has just puffed aside the smoke that enveloped every thing in confusion. Read this pamphlet and TURNBULL, and mark how a' plain statement sets down a featherbed of rhodomontade. TURNBULL is, however, pleasant reading for those who love he- roics, and is as good as any thing of the same nature that has appeared. It is a general and yet full and particular history of the Revolution.
There is an anecdote in the Guardsman's pamphlet, quite as good as the " Tout est perdu" of the courtier when he saw M. ROLAND enter the Tuileries with strings in his shoes. When the troops had been driven out of Paris, and were collecting at St. Cloud round the old King, whose throne was already overturned, to make a last stand, they bivou- acked in the park. The park-keepers came to complain at head- quarters that the troops walked on the grass, which was contrary to the regulations. The monarchy was trampled under foot, but the grass plot was sacred. Of the accuracy of the histories of this event already published, a fair specimen is mentioned by the vera- cious Staff Officer : he refers to ROSSIGNOL'S history; but the same facts, detailed with the same minuteness, may be found in TURNBULL. The death-moments of the young Lieutenant are worked up in the English to even a much greater degree of pathos. See Tuaraium., p.226, 227.
" In page 301, we read that M. Paul Caffe, house-surgeon of the I-Mel-Dieu, attended, and saved from the fury of the people an officer and fifteen grenadiers of the Royal Guards, all of them wounded ; ten others
• were dead, and therefore no longer required his assistance; and that the detachment suffered all this loss for having disregarded the advice of M. Caffe, who had warned the officer that on his arrival at the }Mel de Ville, he and his men would be massacred. But the unfortunate officer is said t° have lived for half a day, and long enough to thank, more than once, his young and intrepid liberator, and to ask his pardon for neglecting his advice?
"This circumstance, which I had some difficulty in recognizing to be the same, relates, to the patrol of fifteen men, sent by the Marshal to the I-16tel de Ville. It is well known that one man only was killed, and that neither the officer nor the detachment fell into the hands. of the people. "Nor did they receive any assistance from M. Caffe. Lastly, the three men who were wounded were taken to the hospital of Gros Caillou, where their wounds were dressed; and the officer and men quickly recovered. 'The Lieutenant, whose death is so pathetically related, is now alive and well; bnt'after this explanation it seems unnecessary to give his name."
"Those poor Swiss !" exclaims this writer, "those poor Swiss ! every body has killed a Swiss ; and if we were so to calculate the loss flythe claims of the conquerors, not only the real amount of Itom eighty-five to ninety would be quite inadequate, but it would be found that every Swiss soldier who took a part in the affairs of July must have been killed nearly twice, over.'' The various. collections under the name, of Libraries, Cyclops- alas,. and Miscellanies, whether of Edinburgh or Londou, are. Can- ducted with a. detree,of care upon the whole, and are from_ the pens ofindividuals _of such eminence, that they take. their place, OR our 'upper shelves, by a sort of collective right, in spite of the great Tdference of their individual merits. We have on our table at this moment a volume of Dr. LARDIVER'S CyClOpEedia on N(arritinneanct anct Inland Discovery, and another on Africa, forming the second vo- lume of the Edinburgh Cabinet Library. They are both got up with more than average ability. The Edinburgh volume is really an admirable compendium of all that has been done to investigate the interior of Africa. CONSTABLE'S Miscellany has lately pro.. duced two volumes of the history of Modcrn;Greece, by Mr. Ersatz- sag. He has performed his task with industry and fairness, and has availed himself of the advantage of knowing the country. Voyages round the world are always delightful reading. The Russian captain, KOTZEBUE'S, however, contain not much that is new, though a great deal that is amusing. It will be much more acceptable in Russia, where it must be a novelty, than in England, where, in point of fact, we are well supplied with news from the Pacific. The account of Pitcairn's Island, for instance, is only at second-hand ; and all its facts are perfectly familiar to English readers. The account of Queen Nomahanna, of the Sandwich Islands, is, however, charming. The good humour and fatness of that lady, and her delight in her fat, and her love of all fat objects (she keeps a pet fat hog), and her enormous appe- tite, and the English finery she wraps round her immense carcass, altogether present one of the most amusing pictures of three-parts savage life we ever read. But her fury for civilization is tremen- dous. Learn to read," says her Majesty to the old men, "or go hang yourself!" She goes to church—(for the inhabitants of Wahu are wonderfully good Christians, or rather Methodists, for they won't bake on a Sunday)—in a little cart drawn by her subjects ; and as the cart was too little to hold her enormous vo- lume of fat, along with another person, she took the Russian Captain in her gigantic arms. She was dressed in a peach- coloured silk gown, made in England, which came to her knees, and a pair of sailor's boots. Put KOTzEBUE next to VANCOUVER. We wish we could give a place in the Library to JoHN WRIGHT'S Retrospect, or Youthful Scenes, since we understand he is a self- taught poet, and has had great difficulties to encounter. We can at least say, that he has considerable power of versification ; and if the whole had been like the very pretty song in page 159, " Canst thou stay behind, Mary," we should have had high praise to give him.
Mr. KENatcx's Latin Grammar is a very useful addition to our school library : we willingly give him a place there, next to the abridgment of MATTHI.E.
Previous page
