30 SEPTEMBER 1876, Page 23

Epistles, Satires, and Epigrams. By James E. Thorold Rogers. (Bentley.)—A

satirist ought, above all things, to be strong. If he claims to lay on the lash, he ought to be able to lay it on with pre- cision and effect. It cannot be said that Mr. Rogers's work is satis- factory. We judge it, and are, indeed, obliged to judge it, by a high standard. It is not only that the originals which he imitates are sin- gularly excellent, that Horace has never been surpassed for ease, Juvenal never surpassed for force ; a man may fall short of great originals without hiving, therefore, failed. It is that both these originals have been imitated before with remarkable success. It is not too much to say, that in the great quality of ease Pope rivals his master. He moves under the restraints of verse in his "Imitations," as indeed he moves always, with unsurpassed facility. It would be impossible to pick out a word and say that it has been used for the sake of the metre or the rhyme. Mr. Rogers has not achieved an equal success. His verse is slipshod rather than easy, and it is difficult to find half-a-dozen consecutive couplets which are not marred by HOMO feebleness, arising, it is evident, from the writer's inability to manage his verse. Nor does he fare better when he comes to compete with Johnson. In the opening of "Satire I.," he does, indeed, attempt a bolder strain, and is not wholly unsuccessful ; but the effort is relaxed before long, and the greater part of the imitations of Juvenal show bat little difference in regard to its versification from the imitation of Horace. To the force and dignity which Johnson shows again and again in "London," and "The Vanity of Human Wishes," there is nothing here that can be compared. The reader shall judge from a specimen which is as good as anything that we can find :— "Hither from Hambro, Frankfort, Riga, Mel, From Smyrna, Scio, Athens, thousand steal ; From Cork, from Galway, Dublin, or Belfast, Eastward or westward, bare they atop at last; Half London is a foreign colony,

Half Liverpool is now, or soon will be;

Each country under heaven transports its hordes, Our servants now, and presently our lords; This one is versatile, and that is bold,

Each with his native brasa wins British gold: Your Schneider's talk all parallel defies, More dark than Hegel, more than Breitmann wise.

Who are these strangers, what do they prorate'?

No bushel hides the light which they possess.

What do they bring to this benighted land ?

What do they not, say rather, understand?

Whatever art and science may be known, They vow they know it, and they know alone.

Give them a chance, and trust them for the rest, They'll hold their own, and hold it with the best.

If heaven were worth their pains, or did it pay, Through heaven itself these men would force their way.

But what's more germane to their highest alma, Some back-stairs influence puffs and puffs their claims.

This is the crew I Hy from. Shall I see Hybrids like these take precedence of me? Shall these adventurers thrive, and take our place, These men of guttural names and dubious race ?— Who six years since, before they made a noise, Came here with Hambro sherry, hemp, and toys. Is it no matter that such stocks as oars Have been the source of al I this country's powers, Have laid the broad foundations of the State, Built up the nation and made England great? That now, like vultures scenting out a prey, These supple tradesmen bustle an away— Give them their way, in every English place The rarest sight will be an English face; Give them their way, and then the ocean o'er Self-banished, he will seek another shore.

Where for some time, until there's cream to skim, These keen-eyed cormorants will not follow him.

We quit oar country, yielding to their claims, And they take all, ay, even take our names. Manasseh. Cohen, Levi, Israel, soon Are Massey, Lewis, Raleigh, and Oolquhoun. But when his tongue the adopted Saxon plies, The voice of Jacob breaks the thin disguise, And by its nasal snuffle, to our view. Betrays the patriarch and unmasks the Jew.

Think you that such as these would sacrifice One single penny of the market price ? Would, if the land which makes them rich and great, Run any risk, a single farthing bate ? Would, if it staked upon some desperate strife All well-earned wealth, and every worthy life, Fail to exact the profit that they might, Or fancy wholesale knavery not their right ?

Learn, from the story of unhappy France, The nation's agony's the tradesman's chance.

Although the storm is high, the sky is dark, Gambetta strives to save the shattered bark ; Hope seems to smile upon his desperate feats.

He fails, because bee forced to trade with cheats.

The people gives its blood, its cash, its toil, While sharp contractors carry off the spoil."

We have spoken chiefly of form, because in satire form is of the first importance, and because to discuss the subject of Mr. Rogers's writings would carry us into all kinds of social and political questions. But we must say that he is not less unjust than those who before him have used a style of writing from which indeed injustice is almost inseparable. To speak of the budget being bought " for a heavy bribe," and of contracts being secured by " feeing clerks all round," is to make grave imputa- tions which seriously affect, not classes, whom satirists are at liberty to attack, but a definite number of individuals. Lord Shaftesbury has done so much for his country that he does not deserve to be sneered at as "an unctuous peer." Reviewers, again, did not do, on the whole, more than justice to a very creditable piece of literary work, when they bestowed some moderate praise on Lord Lorne's poem, though we quite agree with Mr. Rogers in his disgust for the fads adulatio, as he very properly calls it, which has prompted some schoolmasters to give the book as a prize. Satirists, however, always lay about them somewhat at random, and if Mr. Rogers wielded his instrument better, he might have been more easily pardoned.