BOOKS.

HENRY FOTHERGILL CEIORLEY.*

MR. CHORLEY'S vocation WU that of a journalist and critic, and his memoir is not without a considerable share of what may be termed professional interest. Music was his passion, but circum- stances forced him to expend his energies in a variety of directions, and his connection with the Atheneum, which appears from first to last to have been a pleasant one, brought him quite as much into the world of letters as into that of music and the drama. Mr. Chorley was an honest and for the most part a competent critic, in a style of criticism a little out of fashion in the present day. He was an effusive writer of occasional verses, and as a writer of words for music he was "of all Englishmen of his time the most sought after." He published a memoir of Mrs. Hemans, less interesting, to our thinking, than that written by her sister ; certain volumes of tales and sketches, now forgotten ; two or three three-volume novels, also forgotten, one of which was warmly praised by Charles Dickens, who "cried over it heartily ;" a few unsuccessful dramas, as well as one that enjoyed a brief life upon the stage ; a book entitled Music and Manners in France and North Germany, compiled, says his biographer, "with a haste of which the tokens are only too evident in its pages ;" and Thirty Years' Musical Recollections, also marked in Mr.Hewlett's judgment by an unusual slovenliness of style. As a musical critic, Mr. Chorley won a higher position than in any other department of his multi- farious labours. With many distinguished musicians he was on terms of friendship, notably with Mendelssohn, the greatest of them all, and in later life "his judgment seems to have been accepted by the first musicians of England and the Continent as that of a thoroughly competent authority, and listened to by amateurs, except in a limited circle, with more deference than that of any other contemporary critic. In many houses it has been said the Athenzum was habitually read solely for the sake of its musical column." Mr. Hewlett, however, does not state that Mr. Chorley has left any contribution to musical criticism that is of permanent value, and it will be seen that neither as novelist, dramatist, nor poet has he produced any work that will keep its place in literature. Why, then, it may be asked, is it deemed needful to publish his bio- graphy? The necessity of the memoir is far from obvious, but its interest for a certain section of the public is undeniable. Mr. Morley was not in any sense great as a man of letters, but he was sympathetic and enthusiastic, and had the rare art—an art rare at all times, and especially so in an independent and fearless critic—of making friends. His acquaintances were numerous, his intimate associates included men and women illustrious for their genius, and thus in reading his biography we are brought into good society, and meet at the same time with a variety of entertaining gossip. The general reader will probably gain amusement from the " ana " here collected, and from some of Mr. Chorley's plain- spoken judgments on his contemporaries, and we may add, to the • Henry Folhergill Charley: Autobiography, Memoir, and Lettere. Compiled by Henry G. Hewlett. 2 vole. London: Bentley and Sons. WM

credit of the compiler, that in the selection of letters and of passages from the journals of his friend there is little, if anything,. likely to give offence to living persons.

Having sufficiently explained the character of the book, a thoroughly good one of its kind, we shall without further preface turn to its pages for such characteristic passages as may seem best suited to our columns. When Mr. Chorley joined the staff of the. Athen mum, that journal had a powerful rival in the. Literary Gazette, which was conducted by Mr. Jerdan, who was, Mr. Chorley avers, the puppet of certain booksellers, and "dispersed praise or blame at their bidding." He adds that Miss Landon was a principal agent of the editor in this demoralising system. How far this statement of Mr. Chorley's may be true we cannot say, but if only partially correct, it reveals a lack of honourable principle which would be impossible in any high-class journal of the present day. Equally impossible, too, now-a-days, as far as our experience extends, is the coarse vituperation poured upon Mr. Chorley by men who deemed themselves injured by his criticism. "Some of the specimens of abuse," he writes, "with which I was favoured were diverting, rather than offensive, by their utter vulgarity. I kept by me for' some years a collection of such flowers of rhetoric, the most exquisite' of which was a letter written in very black ink, beginning, Yotr Worm !! !" Here is another specimen. " Satan " Montgomery's Luther had been sharply handled in the Athentrum, but had never even been seen by Mr. Chorley, when he received the following' note, accompanied by a third edition of a preface to the poem :— " Be sure your sin will find you out ! One who is well acquainted, with Mr. Chorley's infamous trade of defamation and envy against his betters, in the Athenteum, commends the enclosed to his con- science. If not yet too indurated, it will suggest moral justice to- a mean and malignant trader in literature !"

Mr. Chorley's small gifts as a poet brought, nevertheless, a rick reward. A sonnet obtained for him the friendship of Barry Cornwall, and through him of Mr. and Mrs. Basil Montagu, and' thus he was brought into a friendly and pleasant literary circle. Another piece of good fortune, too, was his acquaintance with' Mr. Henry Roscoe, of whom be formed a very high estimate :—

"His accomplishments," he writes, "were many and real ; his solidity- of judgment was as great as his quickness of sympathy. Like all the- first-class persons I have known, his patience with those inferior to- himself—patience entirely clear of painful condescension—was great. and genuine. Every one was seen to the best possible advantage when beside Henry Roscoe. He could listen and encourage, as well as talk with a natural and flowing brilliancy which I have never heard exceeded,—not three times in my life equalled."

Mr. Chorley enjoyed society, and appears to have lived much in it. At Lady Blessington's he was a constant guest, and he returned, her hospitality by generous praise. A sunny nature, full of sym- pathy and sweet cheerfulness, a faithfulness towards those for- whom she professed friendship, an abounding and inconsiderate liberality even to those who misrepresented and maligned her,— these are some of the traits of character affectionately noted down by Mr. Chorley, who admits, at the same time, that he has heard some who professed an intimate acquaintance with Lady Blessington's- career attack her with a bitterness which left her without a single- redeeming quality. In Lady Blessington's circle Mr. Chorley heard many good stories or witticisms, and some of these he transferred, to his journal. Two or three may be given here :—Hook was once at a large party, "where the lady of the house was more than usually coarsely anxious to get him to make sport for her guests. A ring formed round him of people, only wanting a word's

encouragement to burst out into a violent laugh. Do, Mr. Hook ; do favour us!' said the lady, for the hundredth time. 'Indeed, Madam, I can't ; I can't, indeed ! I am like that little bird the canary ; can't lay my eggs when anyone is looking at me.'

Of Landor, who visited frequently at Gore House, Mr. Chorley observes that he had the very finest man's head he had ever seen. There, too, he met Lord Lytton, then Mr. Bulwer, and received am unfavourable impression of his character, which was marked, as he thought, by egotism and vanity. "it is infinitely amusing," he- writes, "to discover, what there is no escaping from, that he makes personal appearance his idol, and values Voltaire as much ow being a tall man as on his satires or essays." At that time, Lady Holland and Lady Blessington were the leaders of two rival circles, and Sydney Smith was one of Lady Holland's "court-cards," yet- he proved a genuine friend to Mr. Chorley, and gave him the praise, not valueless, surely, of being a gentleman. A similar judgment was passed by Miss Mitford, who considered him one of the most perfectly right-minded and high-minded persons she had ever known. One good friend makes others, and through the author of Our Village Mr. Chorley gained the friendship of John Kenyon, Harness, Talfourd, and the Browning& With Grote,

he toa, formed a close acquaintance, and his estimate of the character of the great historian deserves to be inserted in the next edition of Mrs. Grote's Personal Life. We must find space for a portion of it :—

"He was a sceptic as regards matters of religious faith to the very core. But he was keenly alive to the truth that to force extreme opinions, not called forth, on those having other convictions, is an abuse of freedom of thought and of speech which no large-minded man will permit himself. There was neither craft nor cowardice in his reticence. Had fortune, or worldly position, or life, depended on his falsifying his opinions, he is the last man I have ever known who would have done so In everything he undertook, whether it was of grave im- portance or of slighter pastime, his modesty was as remarkable as his earnestness and his courtesy. The completeness of the scholar and the gentleman strikes me more forcibly on retrospect than it did at the time when I was frequently in his society."

Of the banker and poet, Samuel Rogers, who said perhaps more bitter things in his day—and it was a long one—than anyone of his contemporaries, Mr. Chorley writes severely. Nor is this to be wondered at, for Rogers seems to have disliked him from the first, and showed his dislike very distinctly. He did his best, writes the critic, to make me uncomfortable, and it was often done by repeating the same discouragement :—

"The scene would be a dinner of eight, at which he would say, loud enough to be heard, 'Who is that young man with red hair?' (meaning me.) The answer would be, Mr. Chorley,' et mien!, at cetera. 'Never heard of him before,' was the rejoinder ; after which Rogers would turn to his dinner, like one who, having disposed of a nuisance, might unfold his napkin and eat his soup in peace."

On one occasion, at a concert, Mr. Chorley was seated by the side of the Dowager Lady Essex, one of Rogers' prime favourites. When the old man sought about for a seat, Mr. Chorley rose to give him his. "While I was stooping for my hat,' Come,' said she, in her cordial way, 'come, Mr. Rogers, here is a seat for you by me:— ' Thank you,' said the civil old gentleman, fixing his dead eyes on me, as I was doing my best to get out of the way, thank you, but I don't like your company." Yet Mr. Chorley adds, and after this specimen of intolerable rudeness the admission does him honour, that so generous was Rogers at all times to those needing aid, that when his antipathy to him was most rancorously expressed, he should not have feared presenting the case of poor painter, poor poet, poor musician, or poor governess. "Though I never did apply to Rogers," he observes, "for aid to others, I am personally cognisant of too many acts of munificence quietly done by him, and of which no trumpeting was or is possible, not to dwell on the good as warmly as I talk about the mischief unreservedly." And yet all the while Rogers was using his tongue with the utmost perverseness and cruelty, and Mr. Chorley gives it as his judgment that no old poet was ever so inhuman in sitting in judgment on the works of young poets.

There are some good stories here about Lady Morgan, who had the aptitude of a Frenchwoman for making a blunder and getting out of the difficulty with ease and grace. When pressed too closely on the subject, Lady Morgan used to say that she was born on the sea between Ireland and England. The bubble reputation when sought after in literature is often scarcely more enduring than in other fields. Lady Morgan, who is here styled one of the most feather-brained, restless creatures who ever glittered in the world of female authorship, gained for the nonce a brilliant reputa- tion, both in this country and on the Continent. After her first book on France was published, "she became," says Mr. Chorley, "the rage in Paris, and I have been told on good authority that on one occasion, at some grand reception, she had a raised seat on the dais, only a little lower than that provided for the Duchesse de Berri." This lively and unscrupulous Irishwoman enjoyed the somewhat doubtful fame she acquired, and made the most of it while it lasted. , Mr. Chorley has some characteristic recollections of this dashing authoress, who is now well-nigh forgotten. He remembers how on one occasion, at a great gathering, she broke through a company of men, sat down, and cried out aloud, "Here I am, in the midst of my seraglio ; " how at another time, in her delicious ignorance, she asked at a literary party, "Who was Jeremy Taylor ? " and how she complimented Mrs. Sarah Austin on having written Pride and Prejudice ; how she would declare in one breath that she had created the Irish national novel, while in another, with sublime in- consistency, she would assert that Miss Edgeworth was a grown woman when she was yet a child, and how her resolution to assemble lions of all sorts was nothing short of dauntless. Lady Morgan's ignorance of Jane Austen is capped by an anecdote related of Miss Berry, who, long after the publication of Gebir and the Imaginary Conversations, said, upon bearing the author's name mentioned,—" Mr. Lander? What has he written?" Of Southey, Mr. Chorley observes that he never met with any man who

so thoroughly answered his expectations. "His face is at once shrewd, thoughtful, and quick, if not irritable in its expression ; a singular deficiency of space in its lower portion, but no deficiency of feature or expression ; his manner cold, but still, in conversa- tion, bland and gentle, and not nearly so dogmatic as his writings would lead one to imagine." Sketches such as this of face and manner abound in these volumes, and are in general, we imagine, true to the life. Especially interesting to the admirers of Mrs. Browning are the impressions of that true poet and woman re- corded by Mr. Chorley, who writes that he has never seen a woman "more nobly simple, more entirely guiltless of the feminine pro- pensity of talking for effect; more earnest in assertion, more gentle, yet pertinacious in difference than she was." Amongst the critic's early acquaintances was the poet Campbell, the splendid promise of whose youth was so painfully disappointed in later life. He describes him when they first met in 1837 as "a little man with a shrewd eye, and a sort of pedagoguish, parboiled voice ; plenty to say for him- self, especially about other people, and not restrained from saying whatever seemed good to him by any caution." Mr. Chorley knew the poet when he had become gross and sensual, enfeebled in intellect and well-nigh lost to all sense of what is noble and pare. He could scarcely credit the possibility of there having been much better days, and remarks, "I can hardly describe how painful it was to be sought by one whose notice should have been such an honour, but whom it was hardly possible for youth- ful fastidiousness and want of charity to endure as a companion."

Chief amongst Mr. Chorley'a friends in the later life of both men was Charles Dickens, and it is pleasant to read that on no occasion, great or small, when Mr. Chorley needed consolation or advice, did the great novelist fail to render it. At Gad's Hill he was a frequent guest, and there is an appreciative letter written to the' biographer by Miss Dickens which shows very happily how thoroughly Mr. Chorley deserved and responded to the affection showed to him by her father. We cannot close these volumes without a word in praise of the taste and judgment evinced throughout by the compiler. Mr. Hewlett has done his task well, and Mr. Chorley, who selected him for his chronicler, could hardly have made a better choice.