REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

Lectures on Art and Poems. By Washington Allston. Edited by Richard H. Dana, Jr. New York: Baker & Scribner. 1 vol. 12mo.

The admirers of the greatest of American painters will need none of our advice to read this volume, placing as it does its accomplished author among the greatest of American writers. The Lectures are four long and elaborate essays on art; and they evince a depth and delicacy of insight, a concentrativeness and continuity of thought, a finely harmonized action of reason and imagination, and a command of subtle expression, which entitle them to a high rank among the best critical compositions of the century. The lectures treat of the highest and most exacting principles of creative art, and the passage from them to the poems is a hazardous descent. Though some of these poems have gleams of the author’s genius, they are generally characterized by a penury of imaginative expression which is painful to a reader fresh from the Lectures.

The merely literary reader will find much to delight him in the Lectures, even if he is indisposed to pay much attention to their profound discussion of principles. They contain many specimens of that word-painting which gave such popularity to Ruskin’s “Modern Painters.” The following passage on Vernet is one out of many splendid descriptions. “Now let us look at one of his Storms at Sea, when he wrought from his own mind. A dark, leaden atmosphere prepares us for something fearful; suddenly a scene of tumult, fierce, wild, disastrous, bursts upon us; and we feel the shock drive, as it were, every other thought from the mind; the terrible vision now seizes the imagination, filling it with sound and motion: we see the clouds fly, the furious waves one upon another dashing in conflict, and rolling, as if in wrath, toward the devoted ship; the wind blows from the canvas; we hear it roar through her shrouds; her masts bend like twigs, and her last forlorn hope, the close-reefed foresail, streams like a tattered flag; a terrible fascination still constrains us to look, and a dim, rocky shore looms on her lee; then comes the dreadful cry of ‘Breakers ahead!’ the crew stand appalled, and the master’s trumpet is soundless at his lips. This is the uproar of nature, and we feel it to be true; for here every line, every touch, has a meaning. The ragged clouds, the huddled waves, the prostrate ship, though forced by contrast into the sharpest angles, all agree, opposed as they seem, evolving harmony out of discord. And this is Genius, which no criticism can ever disprove.”

The criticisms in these lectures on Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, Titian, Poussin, Claude, are as unrivaled for discrimination as appreciation. No one has a quicker and deeper eye to detect the excellencies of great works, and no one seizes with more fatal sagacity upon their defects. Everybody has seen copies of Raffaelle’s great picture of the Madonna di Sisto, but few have dared to express their dissatisfaction with the seemingly beautiful figure of St. Catharine. Allston says it is an “evident rescript from the Antique, with all the received lines of beauty, as laid down by the analyst—apparently faultless, yet without a single inflection which the mind can recognize as allied to our sympathies; and we turn from it coldly as from the work of an artificer, not of an Artist. But not so can we turn from the intense life, which seems almost to breathe upon us from the celestial group of the Virgin and her child, and from the Angels below; in these we have the evidence of the divine afflatus—of inspired Art.”

Among the aphorisms written by Allston on the walls of his studio, and published in the present volume, we extract the following:

“Some men make their ignorance the measure of excellence; these are, of course, very fastidious critics; for knowing little, they can find little to like.”

“A witch’s skiff cannot more easily sail in the teeth of the wind, than the human eye lie against fact; but the truth will oftener quiver through lips with a lie upon them.”

“The most common disguise of Envy is in the praise of what is subordinate.”

Southey’s Common-Place Book. Second Series. Special Collections. Edited by his Son-in-Law, John Wood Warter, B. D. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 8vo.

This volume contains the extracts which Southey made from the world of books, relating to special subjects of study. The general topics under which the extracts are grouped, are Ecclesiasticals, the Age of Cromwell, Spanish and Portuguese Literature, the History of the Religious Orders, Orientaliana, American Tribes, Natural History, and Curious Facts. The range of reading that the volume indicates, considered in connection with the number of Southey’s original works, is sufficient to astound a regular book-cormorant, and places Southey fairly among the “laboring classes.” The present volume is more racy in its matter than the preceding, while it does not yield to it in the amount of curious information given. The following passage, taken from Percival Stockdale’s Memoirs, conveys a capital idea of an English military commander. “When Lord George Germains commanded the camp near Brompton, and at Chatham in 1757, Whitfield went to Chatham, sent his respects by Captain Smith to his lordship, and requested permission to preach in the camp. Lord George replied, ‘Make my compliments, Smith, to Mr. Whitfield, and tell him, from me, he may preach any thing to my soldiers that is not contrary to the articles of war.’ ” From the same book Southey extracts an equally edifying paragraph, relating to the view entertained of the Christian religion, by the English naval captain of that time. Percival was appointed chaplain to Capt. Ogle’s ship Resolution, but, he says, “the duty of clergyman was very seldom required of me. One day, however, when I met my naval commander in a street of Portsmouth, and paid my respects to him, he proposed that I should do my duty on the ensuing Sunday on board. I replied that it was my wish to receive such a command more frequently. At all events, replied he, I think it is right that these things should be done sometimes, as long as Christianity is on foot.” The simplicity with which religion is patronized in both of these instances, makes them richly humorous.

Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A New Edition. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 2 vols. 10mo.

This edition of Longfellow contains all his poems, and makes two finely printed volumes of some five hundred pages each, at about half the original price. In their present tasteful form they will doubtless have a large circulation, for their author is the most popular poet of the day on both sides of the Atlantic. His poems sell better in England than those of Tennyson, Browning, Mrs. Browning, Bailey or Milnes. This wide popularity he has fairly won by his merits, as he has not lacked carping critics or envious defamers to obstruct his path to success. The source of the fascination he holds equally over cultivated and uncultivated minds is partly owing to the fine humanity and sweetness of his spirit. Good nature is a portion of his genius; without this good nature, man, says Bacon, is but “a better kind of vermin;” but we are sorry to say that it is not a prominent characteristic of many minds largely gifted with the poetic faculty. Longfellow, in addition to this heartiness, full of seriousness which does not exclude cheer, has a broad and imaginative mind, which has assimilated and inwrought into its own substance the spirit of many literatures; and this gives a vital richness to his thought which no other contemporary poet but Tennyson can be said to possess. Probably few poets ever excelled him in the difficult art of preserving an equilibrium of ambition and capacity, so that nothing is attempted which is not satisfactorily performed. Many poets who aim higher than Longfellow, please less, because we are conscious of the stir and sting of great aspirations which are unaccompanied by sufficient imagination to give them adequate form and expression, and the result is that the mind is disturbed rather than exalted. In Longfellow aspiration and inspiration are perfectly harmonized.

The Angel World, and Other Poems. By Philip James Bailey, author of “Festus.” Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo.

“Festus,” a monstrous agglomeration of irreconcilable opinions, lit up with fancy, and seasoned with warm sensations, was Mr. Bailey’s first bantling —

“Got while his soul did huddled notions try,

And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.”

“The Angel World” is his second product, the result of the slow gestation of many years, with fewer faults and fewer merits than “Festus”. Many persons who would hesitate in calling “Festus” a poem, discerned in it a chaos of poetical matter; and they supposed that the author’s unquestioned fertility would be forced into form when his powers matured. In “The Angel World” we find an approach to form with a decay of fertility. This seems to prove that anarchy is not so much the precursor of art as the destroyer of vitality, and that Bailey’s mind found in anarchy its fittest expression. There is not enough greatness in the man to make a great poem. Coleridge, in his remarks on Love’s Labor Lost, says that “true genius begins in generalizing and condensing; it ends in realizing and expanding. It first collects the seeds.” Bailey’s process is the reverse of this; he first expands, then condenses—and his expansion accordingly lacks substance, and his condensation richness. But though “The Angel World” is inferior to “Festus,” it still exhibits sufficient wealth of imagery to give it prominence among contemporary poems, and to exact the attention of all poetical readers. A poem which contains numerous thoughts as fine as the following cannot be justly condemned:

In one

A soul of lofty clearness, like a night

Of stars, wherein the memory of the day

Seems trembling through the meditative air.

The “other poems” which follow “The Angel World” are of various degrees of merit, indicating that the author is a man of moods, and is rapt or muddled, according as his sensibility rises or falls. A few of the poems are almost ecstatic, and equal the most striking passages in “Festus.”

The Ways of the Hour: A Tale. By the author of “The Spy,” “The Red Rover,” etc. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo.

Mr. Cooper is a philanthropist of a peculiar kind. He makes an inventory of popular errors and vices, some of them thoroughly inwoven in the affections or manners of the people, and then daringly drives at them with the whole might of his pen. We honor his courage, and sympathize with his hatred of cant, even when we are disposed to doubt his judgment, and to regret his fretful way of presenting his opinions. Opposition seems to have deepened some of his dislikes into antipathies, and a man with antipathies is always unreasonable even in his assaults upon error and vice. There is one thing, however, for which Mr. Cooper cannot be too highly praised, and that is, his keen perception of the real faults which, in a democracy, should come under the lash of the moralist and the satirist. Far from pandering to popular delusions, he expends all his force in exposing and attacking them. The present novel is full of thrusts at the political bubbles of New York, some of which really subside into their “elemental suds” under his treatment. The general object of the novel is to exhibit the injustice which results from our system of trials by jury—an injustice which Mr. Cooper thinks is the necessary consequence of that system in a democracy. This we deem a monstrous paradox, though the story which illustrates it is ingenious and interesting, and will well repay perusal.

Gallery of Illustrious Americans. Brady & D’Avignon, New York, 1850.

Daguerreotypes by Brady—Engraved by D’Avignon, with Biographical Notices by C. Edwards Lester, assisted by other literary men. This is announced by the publishers of this work, and is sufficient alone to recommend it. It will be a noble Gallery when completed, if carried out as commenced. Two numbers are before us. The first number contains a fine portrait of Gen. Taylor, with a short clear notice of his life. The second number has a striking life-like head of Mr. Calhoun, which is particularly valuable now, that we are all called upon as countrymen to mourn the death of this great and good man. The biographical notice of Mr. Calhoun is well written and interesting.

We have but one fault to find with this work. The interior of the cover is used as a sort of journal—“Fly Leaf of Art and Criticism,” as it is called, but its piquant notices, and clever short articles of poetry and prose are too valuable to be thus thrown away on a mere cover. However, it proves that the liberal publishers wish to make their work as attractive as possible.

Posthumous Works of the Rev. Thomas Chalmers, D. D., L.L.D. New York: Harper & Brothers. Vol. 9.

This volume of Chalmers is as valuable as any in the series, and, to us, the most interesting of the whole. It contains Prelections on Butler’s Analogy, Paley’s Evidences of Christianity, and Hill’s Lectures in Divinity, and affords some test of the great clergyman’s real merit in the science of theology. Although the volume does not place Chalmers in the first class of theological thinkers, it indicates sufficient originality, independence and force of thought to give him a high position in the second class.

Downing Street. (Latter-Day Pamphlets, No. 3.) By Thomas Carlyle. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. New York: Harper & Brothers.

We do not see as these pamphlets decrease in impudence and raciness as the author proceeds; they are among the most exhilarating of contemporary publications, and however mad in parts, are calculated to give a sharp shock to English dogmatism, if they do not succeed in ameliorating English institutions. In “Downing Street” Carlyle makes an assault on the executive department of the English government. The attack has more reason in it than the substitute proposed for the present system. In speaking of the inadequacy of Parliamentary government to obtain the best men for rulers, he refers to Robert Burns, the noblest soul of his time in England, and yet one for whom the government could find no fitter employment than to gauge ale. “And so,” remarks Carlyle, “like Apollo taken for a Neatherd, and perhaps for none of the best on the Admetus establishment, this new Norse Thor had to put up with what was going; to gauge ale, and be thankful, pouring his celestial sun-light through Scottish song-writing—the narrowest chink ever offered to a thunder-god before! And the measure Pitt, and his Dundasses and red-tape phantasms (growing very ghastly now to think of) did not in the least know or understand—the impious, god-forgetting mortals—that Heroic Intellects, if Heaven were pleased to send such, were the one salvation for the world, and for them, and all of us. No; ‘they had done very well without’ such; did not see the use of such; ‘went along very well’ without such; well presided over by singular Heroic Intellect called George the Third; and the Thunder-god, as was rather fit for him, departed early, still in the noon of life, somewhat weary of gauging ale!”

King René’s Daughter: a Danish Lyrical Drama. By Henrik Hertz. Translated by Theodore Martin. Boston: Crosby & Nichols. 1 vol. 16mo.

This drama cannot boast any remarkable imaginative power, but it is still a most exquisite creation, conceived in the spirit of the finest human sympathy, and purifying the mind which it seemingly enters merely to please. We trust that the American, as well as the English public will, in the translator’s words, have the taste to “appreciate a drama which owes its effect solely to the simplicity of its structure, the ideal beauty of its central character, and the atmosphere of poetry and old romance by which it is pervaded.” Iolanthe, the character thus indicated, has a clear and vital sweetness at the heart of her being, which wins every reader’s affection. The genius of the author may be likened to the nightingale in his own lyric —

The eagle we tell

By his sweep full well,

As proudly afar in the clouds he soars,

And the nightingale,

By the trilling wail

Her throat in the dewy May-time pours.

The Petrel, or Love on the Ocean, by Sir Ameral Fisher. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson.

This is one of the most spirited sea novels that we have read since Cooper witched the world with his Red Rover. It is full of intense interest throughout, and must find a wide sale among all lovers of nautical adventure. The heroine, Norah, is a beautifully drawn character, as is also the bold, dashing Herbert, her lover. The attack upon the pirates has all the freshness and daring of Tom Cringle’s Log.

Sketches of Minnesota, the New England of the West. With Incidents of Travel in that Territory during the Summer of 1849. By E. S. Seymour. With a Map. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.

This is an useful book, making no pretensions to elegance of style or vividness of description, but giving the history and topography of Minnesota, its past and present condition, in a plain, dogged way. To those interested in the subject, the book will reward perusal, but we can hardly commend it as having any charm for the common reader.

The Life of John Calvin, Compiled from Authentic Sources, and Particularly from his Correspondence. By Thomas H. Dyer. With a Portrait. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.

Here we have, for the first time, a biography of Calvin, based on original materials, and written by one who does not belong to the Calvinistical sect. The volume is well written, is laden with important information, and is exceedingly impartial. The digests given of Calvin’s works in the order of their composition, and the copious extracts from his private correspondence, conduct us close to the character of the man. The real greatness of Calvin is more apparent in this work than in any we have seen written by professed followers of his creed. The chapters relating to Servetus have a dramatic interest as well as a religious significance. It may be generally said in praise of the volume, that no one who has not read it, is entitled to give a confident opinion of the character of its subject.