PRINGLE'S POEMS AND LIFE.
THE name of THOMAS PRINGLE, the late able Secretary of tit Anti-Slavery Society, and his various literary productions, are tot., well known to the readers of the Spectator to need either an elate • rate eulogy on the occasion of a new edition of his Poems, a an apology for the copious Memoir which his friend Mr. RITCHU has here prefixed to them. The Poems (left corrected by 61 author in the bands of Mr. Moxont for publication) will bear tie test of repeated perusal ; and the Memoir justifies the khalif feelings,cheriahed by a numerous and powerful body towards tit excellent author, gut the circumstances under which the volute is published shed a light upon his character, in a way peculisk calculated to arrest attention. The labour and hazard of di publication—the labour certain, and hazard not inconsiderable- have been bestowed, with rare liberality, as gifts of friendship in' tended to promote the comfort of the departed poet's family. The fact is a practical illustration of the real influence which the modes and bumble THOMAS PRINGLE exercised; and when his biograple says, that " owing to his double position as a literary man sad Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, he formed the connecting link between the press and the sacred cause of freedom—ord the expression may be used in a restricted sense—between moral and intellectual world," he opened a topic that deserves' tensive examination. The Memoir abundantly proves the respett. able position held by PRINGLE among men of letters of the highest class. It was no ordinary poet, of whose youthful imitattoo, SCOTT, the imitated, said, he " wished the original notes bid always been as fine as their echo;" and whose later anonymoa poem, " Afar in the Desert," was read again and again, and eye copied again and again, by COLERIDGE. CAMPBELL, ROGERS MACINTOSH, AMR'S, BUL'WER, HOGG, ROSCOE, and a creed more, " non ignobile vulgus," deservedly esteemed him for ha purity of style as ass writer ; whilst his purer life and " bight: aims' gained him golden opinions from the zealous thousands, who, with CLARKSON, W ILBERFORCE, MACAULAY, and BUXTON, chose him for their penman in the Anti-Slavery cause. The attention of these philanthropists was first attracted to Mr. PRINGLE by a paper which he wrote in CAMPBELL'S Magazine: and the following striking passage in this Memoir shows hot sagaciously they made their choice. " While reflecting upon the circumstances of Pringle's residence in Seal Africa," says Mr. RICC141F., "L cannot help being struck with what is can' monly called the injustice of Fortune, all regarded him. Whenever the ernao within of the Coloured races is mentioned, names—glorious names iu the hostel of civilization I—present themselves to the grateful memory ; but who moll; that humble emigrant, whose moral influence, spreading like an atmerplial throughout the colony, prepars.1 the minds of men for a revolution, %dab remote and comparatively unimportant as was the field of action, can reckoned within less than sublime. Pringle communicated a portion of rend to our African colony ; and not merely in the printed essays, and moral struggles of the philatithtopiat. was his advocacy of the eternal ptinciplea of nature and religion made manifest, but even the wild strains of his Border noise sent a thrill of generous feeling through many a cold and selfish heart. In his Liston., in fact, is exhibited the stealthy influence of Literature, unseen in its action, but felt more powerfully in its results than the fiercest war."
This is well expressed, and every word is true : but it by no means tells the whole truth of the case. Many things, doubtless, contribute to make us what we are as a people, and to produce
the effects seen in our intercourse with those races of men hitherto destroyed whilst we are spreading all over the world ; but none
will doubt that legislation greatly influences their miserable condition, or deny that legislation is in its turn influenced by pub- lic opinion, whenever directed steadily to subjects of interest. Still less will it be doubted that public opinion may be extensively affected by our literature, upon any subject well understood and fully dis- cussed. Here, however, are two preliminary conditions to be ful- filled, before the influence of legislation upon the Coloured race can be made such as isoots and honest men wish it to be. In the first place, the subjects to be legislated upon must be sufficiently in- teresting, and then they must be well discussed. Hence the value of a powerful and judicious mind to bring home clearly to the British public the details which intimately concern the distant Coloured people, and which their very distance makes obscure. In the last century, the affairs of India might not have ob- tained so intense a scrutiny from Fox, BURKE, and SHERIDAN, if the pen of Sir PHILIP FRANCIS had not first made them familiar. Su GRANVILLE SHARPE, CLARKSON, and a host of writers, receded the horrors of Negro slavery, long before the struizele of statesmen for its abolition began. In like manner, Mr.' PRINGLE was the most remarkable writer of his time on all brunches of the subject. CAMPBELL had before produced the " Pleasures of Hope ;" COwDER had pleaded for the Negro; and man■ more had made great isio/afrd effiwts in the same cause. PaINGLa came from Africa with a heart deeply impressed with thewrongs of its tribes; with a courage undaunted by his own suf- ferings at the hands of their oppressors; and with a mind capable of bringing his appeals on their behalf acceptably before the ablest writers of the time : they, once rightly impressed and well-in- structed, would act upon the public mind with continuous ethats. It is the continued blows that beat down all opposition, and clear away ail errors ; and in no quality was PRINGLE more re- markable than in that of steady perseverance in the cause of the oppressed. To many he was really the originator of their know- ledge and almost of their zeal in this cause : to all he airs a most cordial coadjutor. One literary correspondent writes to him, "I have read your delightful little volume of poetry, I should almost say studied it, with great pleasure indeed. Your African pictures are amazingly bold and new ; and so fresh and true-like, that I feel as if 1 could trace the lion to his lair."
Another correspondent, and that is COLERIDGE, says, in a letter before alluded to, and which was written at the commeriec- melit of their acquaintance- " It is some four or five months ago since G. Thompson 's Trards, 5.r. in Southern Africa, passing its book-club course through our house, my eye by accident lighting on some verses, I mach against my wont was tempted to go On; and so I first became acquainted with your Afar in the _Desert. Though at that time so busy that I had not looked at any of the new books, I was token so completely possession of, that for some days I did little else but read and recite your poem, now to this group and now to that ; and since that time have :either written or caused to be written, at least half-a-dozen copies, and procured my friend Slr. Gillman, who, and nut I, is a member of the bock-club, to pus- these the two volumes fie me. The day before yesterday, I sent a copy in my own hand to my son, the Reverend D. Coleridge, or rather to his bride, at Helston, Cornwall ; and then discovered that it had been reprinted in the Atheneum, with the omission of about four, or at the utmost of six lines, 1 • do not hesitate to declare it among the two or three most perfect lyric poems is our language. Precepitandus est fiber spiritus,' says the critic ; and you have thoroughly fulfilled the prescript."
In another letter, COLERIDGE says—" How greatly I have been interested by the subject, you may infer from the fact, that I have read through the whole 655 folio pages (Anti-Slavery papers, 1832,4 literatim et verbatim. You will find some of nly mar- ginalia; an inveterate trick of mine, without consideration of whose book it may be," A third letter from Mr. CoLsainue payee that the reading of PRINGLE'S books has not been lost upon " Notwithstanding Mr. Stanley's recent concessions, I still think his apprentices to be scourged by the beadle, instead of slaves .tOik whipped by the overseer, has been somewhat too subtle for zero understandings." To the extracts already made, many more could be added of a ;ike character : Mr. RITCHIE'S remarks and personal testimony in the following passage of the Memoir are rigorously true.
" To write the history of the Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society," says he, " would be to write the history of the Great Abolitiou Question. To that cause his energies of body and mind were devoted : and here again is afforded a remarkable instance of the all-pervadiug influence of literature. Had he been a mere Secretary, his efforts, however praiseworthy, would have been compa- ratively unimportant. But as it was, he contrived to introduce a portiou of his own enthusiasm into the press. I well remember his zeal un this must impor- tant point ; and 1 do /10t speak of it merely with reference to myself, the humblest of his literary friends. Yet let me oot he supposed to underrate the power of even the most frivolous public writer. The influence of the press is by no means confined to politics and literature. The fugitive essay—the nem- sroual poem—the novel of its season'—are each a powerful engine in the formation or direction of opinion, and not the less powerful that its operation is unnoticed or unseen.
" This zeal, in connexion with an essential part of his character, I cannot better or more beautifully illustrate than by the full:min extract trout a letter to one of his confidential friends. He had undertaken the editorship of Friend. ship's 00 ring, a well-kuown Annual ; and was complaining to his corre- spondent, (a lady, whose name, after the revelations made to me by the papers of the (heeded, will ever be associated in my mind with the holiest and must feelings of our nature,) of having been prevented by circumstances, which he mentioned, in m indulging in his own subject in the first volume com- mitted to his charge. " ' Should 1 agree,' he continues, to edite another volume, however, I shall certainly insert a story ur two illustrative of the condition of the Colonial popu- lation in South Africa ; for, though my immediate object in undertaking the editorship of such a work is to eke out an otherwise scanty income, I do not feel satisfied at devoting even my leisure hours to an object which hse no higher aim than the mere entertainment of the lovers of light literature.' " I recollect that at his suggestion and request I wrote an examination of the great question for one of the periodicals; and I recollect, too, that in writing other papers, on quite a different subject, my pen frequently strayed almost un- consciously into an expression of the sentiments I entertained regarding slavery. A similar effect, I know, was produced upon many of his other friends; *Md, in fact, if such apparently casual ebullitions on the part of literary men could he traced to their source, I have no doubt in my mind but at least one-half of them, during the period of his Secretaryship, would be found to have originated iu Pringle."
Such a man ought not to have been left by the Whig party, as by this Memoir it appears THOMAS PRINGLE was left in 1834, to the humiliation of trying to obtain by favour that which was due to him from the justice of the Crown. To bin), worn out in the cause, was largely owing the proudest victory of the party, Negro Emancipation; and under this Administration be in vain claimed an indemnity for Colonial persecution. if be had possessed strength of body equal to his vigour of mind, they would have repented of this gross injustice.
It remains for the discerning portion of the public to do sub- stantial honour to the exertions which have produced this volume for the " sole" benefit of the family of the deceased; and we offer our tribute of praise to the able writer of the Life, and to the literal publisher, for their joint labour. The Memoir contains an appeal which we willingly second-
" Pringle's claims were virtually allowed by Earl Bathurst ; nod they were distinctly admitted by Sir. Spring lice, adieu he stated the reasons (uncon- nected with the merits of the applicalon) why it was impossible to give him either a crane of land, or a public employment at the Cape. Pringle, however, is now no more ; and, setting aside the whole question as it related to himself, can it he denied that the widow of such a man has still a claim upon the country? Would it not be an act worthy of our young and considerate Sovereign—an au pleasing alike to God and man—a noble, beautiful, and holy act—to bestow s small pension upon Sirs. Pringle, to secure the living representative of de. ;Kilted worth from those worldly deprivations and annoyances which, unalle- siated, are calculated to add many bitters to the cup of her bereavement?"
To place Mrs. PRINGLE among the first sharers of the Queen's Raul, for 1838, would be a just act, and a popular application of that questionable fund.
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