Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848

THE OCEAN-BURIED

COMPOSED, AND DEDICATED TO MISSES HARRIET AND MARY HALSEYOf Blooming Grove, O. C., N. Y.,BY MISS AGNES H. JONESLet my death-slumber be where a mother's prayerAnd sister's tears can be blended there.Oh, it will be sweet ere the heart's throb is o'er,To know, when its fountain shall gush no more,That those it so fondly has yearn'd for will come,To plant the first wild-flower of spring on my tomb.Let me lie where lov'd ones can weep over me —Bury me not in the deep, deep sea!And there is another, her tears would be shedFor him who lays far in an ocean bed;In hours that it pains me to think of now,She has twin'd these locks and kiss'd this brow —In this hair she has wreathed shall the sea-snake hiss?The brow she has press'd shall the cold wave kiss?For the sake of that bright one that wails for me,Bury me not in the deep, deep sea!"She hath been in my dreams" – his voice failed short,They gave no heed to his dying prayer. —They have lowered him o'er the vessel's side —Above him hath closed the solemn tide.Where to dip her wing the wild fowl rests —Where the blue waves dance with their foamy crests —Where the billows bound and the winds sport free,They have buried him there, in the deep, deep sea.

REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS

Calaynos: A Tragedy. By George H. Boker, E. H. Butler & Co. Philadelphia, pp. 218.#/

The spirit of English poetry has been for years eminently lyric; the few attempts at the epic or dramatic having been laid aside, if not permanently, at least for a time. The age has been too busy in working out, with machinery and steam, its own great epic thought, to find leisure to listen to any thing longer than a single bugle-blast encouraging its advancement. We cannot but believe, however, if we may be allowed an analogical inference, that the age is fast approaching the climax of its utilitarian inventions, and that man, instead of chasing through unknown regions every will-o-wisp of his brain, in the hope of bringing it a captive to the Patent-office, will sit modestly down to apply to their various uses the discoveries already made. Then will the healthy feast of literature once more begin, and the public cease to be surfeited by the watery hash which has been daily set steaming before them. In the volume under consideration we think we can discern the promise of the return of the good old spirit of English poetry – of solid honest thought expressed in straight forward Saxon. The story, which is one of the chivalrous days of Spain, while it is devoid of trick is full of thrilling interest, and its style, while it is eminently poetical, neither swells into bombast nor descends to the foppery so common among the verse-makers of our day. There is a stately, old-fashioned tread in the diction, as of a man in armor, who, should he attempt to gather flowers of mere prettiness, would crush them at the first touch of his iron gauntlet, and who, if he seems to move ungracefully at times, owes his motion to his weight of mail. Calaynos, the hero, is in every respect a nobleman, not only in blood, but what is better, in mind. He is a scholar, one who, in the words of Dona Alda his wife,

– uses time as usurers do their gold,Making each moment pay him double interest.

He is a philosopher —

Things nigh impossible are plain to him;His trenchant will, like a fine-tempered blade,With unturned edge, cleaves through the baser iron.

He is generous and has and holds that

– a predetermined trust in man;

and holds that

He who hates man must scorn the Source of man,And challenge as unwise his awful Maker.

The character of Dona Alda is noble and womanly – her chief trait being her great pride and jealous care of her honor. She conceives that no one will brave the

– peril, such as he must brook,Who dares to love the wife of great Calaynos.

Her maid, Martina, tells her that

– Queens of SpainHave had their paramours —

and she replies,

– So might it be,Yet never hap to bride of a Calaynos!

Don Luis, the villain of the plot, thus paints his own picture:

– I was not formed for good:To what Fate orders I must needs submit:The sin not mine, but His who made me thus —Not in my will but in my nature lodged.I will grasp the stable goods of life,Nor care how foul the hand that does the deed.

Martina is admirably drawn; her wit is excellent, and as exhaustless as it is keen. She says of Calaynos —

He looks on pleasure as a kind of sin,Calls pastime waste-time —I heard a man, who spent a mortal lifeIn hoarding up all kinds of stones and ores,Call one, who spitted flies upon a pin,A fool to pass his precious lifetime thus.

She says of Oliver, Calayno's secretary,

Yes, there he goes —Backward and forward, like a weaver's shuttle,Spinning some web of wisdom most divine.

She addresses him thus —

Our clay, the preachers say, was warmed to life;But yours, your dull, cold mud, was froze to being.I would not be the oyster that you areFor all the pearls of wisdom in your shell!

All the persons of the play are vivid and life-like. With the beginning of the third act the interest becomes intense, and nothing could be more vigorous and touching than the action and depth of pathos toward the close of the piece. Every page teems with fine thoughts and images, which lead us to believe that the mine from which this book is a specimen, contains a golden vein of poetry which will go far to enrich our native literature.

Literary Sketches and Letters: Being the Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, Never before Published. By Thomas Noon Talfourd. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.

The present work is important in more respects than one. It was needed to clear up the obscurity which rested on several points of Lamb's life, and it was needed to account for some of the peculiarities of his character. The volume proves that this most genial and kindly of humorists was tried by as severe a calamity as ever broke down the energies of a great spirit, and the frailties commonly associated with his name seem almost as nothing compared with the stern duties he performed from his early manhood to his death. The present volume is calculated to increase that personal sympathy and love for him, which has ever distinguished the readers of Lamb from the readers of other authors, and also to add a sentiment of profound respect for his virtues and his fortitude. The truth is that Lamb's intellect was one of the largest and strongest, as well as one of the finest, among the great contemporary authors of his time, and it was altogether owing to circumstances, and those of a peculiarly calamitous character, that this ample mind left but inadequate testimonials of its power and fertility. He is, and probably will be, chiefly known as an original and somewhat whimsical essayist, but his essays, inimitable of their kind, were but the playthings of his intellect.

Talfourd has performed his editorial duties with his usual taste and judgment, and with all that sweetness and grace of expression which ever distinguishes the author of Ion. His sketches of Lamb's companions are additions to the literary history of the present century. Lamb's own letters, which constitute the peculiar charm of the book, are admirable – the serious ones being vivid transcripts of his moods of mind, and some of them almost painful in their direct expression of agony, and the semi-serious rioting in mirth, mischief and whim, full of wit and meaning, and full also of character and kindliness. One of his early letters he closes, as being from his correspondent's "afflicted, headachey, sore-throatey, humble servant." In another he calls Hoole's translation of Tasso "more vapid than smallest small beer, 'sun-vinegared.'" In speaking of Hazlitt's intention to print a political pamphlet at his own expense, he comes out with a general maxim, which has found many disciples: "The first duty of an author, I take it, is never to pay any thing." When Hannah More's Cœlebs in Search of a Wife appeared, it was lent to him by a precise lady to read. He thought it among the poorest of common novels, and returned it with this stanza written in the beginning:

If ever I marry a wifeI'd marry a landlord's daughter,For then I may sit in the bar,And drink cold brandy-and-water.

In speaking of his troubles toward the close of his life, he has a strange, humorous imagination, in every way worthy of his peculiar genius: "My bedfellows are cough and cramp; we sleep three in a bed."

The present volume is elegantly printed, and will doubtless have a run. It is full of matter, and that of the most interesting kind. No reader of Lamb, especially, will be without it.

Modern French Literature. By L. Raymond de Vericour. Edited by W. S. Chase, A. M. Boston: Gould, Kendall & Lincoln. 1 vol. 12mo.

This work is the English production of a native Frenchman, and was written for one of Chambers's series of books for the people. It is edited, with notes alluding particularly to writers prominent in the late French Revolution, by a young American scholar, who has recently resided in France. The book, though deficient and sometimes incorrect in details, deserves much praise for its general correctness and accuracy. The author, though by no means a critic of the first class, is altogether above the herd of Grub street hacks who commonly undertake the popularizing of literary history. He is no Winstansley and no Cibber. The range of his reading appears to be extensive. His judgments are somewhat those of a school-master, but one of the highest grade. There are several amusing errors relating to the position of English authors, to some of which we cannot help alluding, as they seem to have escaped the vigilant eye of the editor. Speaking of Guizot and Sismondi as the leaders of the school of French philosophical historians, he remarks that "the English language possesses some good specimens of this class of history; the most remarkable are Gibbon's Decline and Fall and the works of Mr. Millar." This is as if the author had said that England possessed some good specimens of the Romantic Drama, the most remarkable being Shakspeare's Macbeth and the works of Mr. Colman.

Again, in speaking of the novels of Paul de Kock, and protesting against those English critics who call him the first writer of his time and country, he says that it is as ridiculous as it would be in Frenchmen to exalt the novels of Charles Dickens above Ivanhoe, Philip Augustus and Eugene Aram, The idea of a Frenchman thinking it a paradox to rank Dickens above James, or even Bulwer, shows how difficult it is for a foreigner, especially a Frenchman, to pass beyond the external form of English literature.

The author deserves the praise of being a sensible man, in the English meaning of the phrase. There is one sentence in his introductory which proves that his mind has escaped one besetting sin of the French intellect, which has prevented its successful cultivation of politics as a practical science. In speaking of the histories of Thiers and Mignet, he says that they "have hatched a swarm of Jeunes Prances, vociferating in their wild aberrations, emphatic eulogies on Marat, Coulhon and Robespierre, and breathing a love of blood and destruction, which they call the progressive march of events."

Rise and Fall of Louis Philippe, Ex-King of the French, Giving a History of the French Revolution from, its Commencement in 1789. By Benj. Perley Poore, Boston: Wm. D. Ticknor & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.

Of all the publications we have seen relating to Louis Philippe this is the most complete and the most agreeable. The author, from his long residence in Paris, and from his position as Historical Agent of the State of Massachusetts, was enabled to collect a large mass of matter relating to French history, and also to learn a great deal respecting the Orleans dynasty, which would not naturally find its way into print. The present volume, though it has little in relation to the first French Revolution not generally known by students, embodies a large number of important facts respecting Louis Philippe, which we believe are now published for the first time. The biography itself has the interest of a romance, for few heroes of novels ever were, in imagination, subjected to the changes of fortune which Louis encountered in reality. Mr. Poore's view of his character is not more flattering than that which commonly obtains – on both sides of the Atlantic. To sustain this disparaging opinion of his subject, however, he is compelled to suppose policy and hypocrisy as the springs of many actions which a reasonable charity would pronounce virtuous and humane. It must be conceded that the conduct of the king during the last few days of his reign was feeble, if not cowardly, but his uniform character in other periods of his life was that of a man possessing singular readiness and coolness in times of peril, and encountering obstacles with a courage as serene as it was adventurous.

The Tenant of Wildfield Hall. By Acton Bell, Author of Wurthuring Heights.. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.

The appearance of this novel, so soon after the publication of Wurthuring Heights, is an indication of Mr. Bell's intention to be a frequent visiter, or visitation, of the public. We are afraid that the personages he introduces to his readers will consist chiefly of one class of mankind, and this class not the most pleasing. He is a monomaniac on the subject of man's rascality and brutality, and crowds his page with forcible delineations of offensive characters and disgusting events. The power he displays is of a high but limited order, and is exercised chiefly to make his readers uncomfortable. To be sure the present novel is not so bad as Wurthuring Heights in the matter of animal ferocity and impish diabolism; but still most of the characters, to use a quaint illustration of an eccentric divine, "are engaged in laying up for themselves considerable grants of land in the bottomless pit," and brutality, blasphemy and cruelty constitute their stock in trade. The author is not so much a delineator of human life as of inhuman life. There are doubtless many scenes in The Tenant of Wildfield Hall drawn with great force and pictorial truth, and which freeze the blood and "shiver along the arteries;" but we think that the author's process in conceiving character is rather logical than imaginative, and consequently that he deals too much in unmixed malignity and selfishness. The present novel, with all its peculiar merits, lacks all those elements of interest which come from the generous and gentle affections. His champagne enlivens, but there is arsenic in it.

Brothers and Sisters. By Frederika Bremer. Translated by Mary Howitt. New York: Harper & Brothers.

This is by no means one of Miss Bremer's best productions, but it is not on that account a commonplace production. The pathos, the cheerfulness, the elevation, the sweet humane home-feeling of the Swedish novelist, are here in much of their old power, with the addition of universal philanthropy and the rights of labor. But we fear that the original vein of our authoress is exhausted, and that she is now repealing herself. It is a great mistake to suppose that a new story, new names of characters, additional sentiments nicely packed in new sentences, make a new novel, when the whole tone and spirit of the production continually reminds the reader of the authors previous efforts. It is no depreciation of Miss Bremer's really fine powers to assert, that she lacks the creative energy of Scott, or the ever active fancy and various observation of Dickens.

Grantley Manor. By Lady Georgiana Fullerton. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.

This is altogether one of the finest novels which have appeared for many years. It is written with much beauty of style; evinces a creative as well as cultivated mind, and contains a variety of characters which are not only interesting in themselves, but have a necessary connection with the plot and purpose. The mind of the author has that combination of shrewdness and romantic fervor, of sense and passion, so necessary to every novelist who desires to idealize without contradicting the experience of common life.

EDITOR'S TABLE

To the readers of "Graham". – A series of misfortunes having bereft me of any proprietory interest in this Magazine, the present publishers have made a liberal arrangement with me, and for the future, the editorial and pictorial departments of Graham's Magazine will be under the charge of Joseph R. Chandler, Esq., J. Bayard Taylor, Esq., and myself.

It is due to the subscribers to "Graham" from me, to state, that from the first hour I took charge of it, the warmest support and encouragement were given me, and from two not very profitable magazines "Graham" sprung at once into boundless popularity and circulation. Money, as every subscriber knows, was freely expended upon it, and an energy untiring and sleepless was devoted to its business management, and had I not, in an evil hour, forgotten my own true interests, and devoted that capital and industry to another business which should have been confined exclusively to the magazine, I should to-day have been under no necessity – not even of writing this notice.

I come back to my first love with an ardor undiminished, and an energy not enervated, with high hopes and very bold purposes. What can be done in the next three years, time, that great solver of doubts, must tell. What a daring enterprize in business can do, I have already shown in Graham's Magazine and the North American – and, alas! I have also shown what folly can do, when business is forgotten – but I can yet show the world that he who started life a poor boy, with but eight dollars in his pocket, and has run such a career as mine, is hard to be put down by the calumnies or ingratitude of any. Feeling, therefore, that having lost one battle, "there is time enough to win another," I enter upon the work of the "redemption of Graham," with the very confident purposes of a man who never doubted his ability to succeed, and who asks no odds in a fair encounter.

GEO. R. GRAHAM.

An Acquisition. – Our readers will share in the pleasure with which it is announced, that Joseph R. Chandler, Esq., the accomplished writer, and former editor of "The United States Gazette," will hereafter be "one of us" in the editorial management of Graham's Magazine. There are few writers in the language who equal, and none excel Mr. Chandler in graceful and pathetic composition. His sketches live in the hearts of readers, while they are heart-histories recognized by thousands in every part of the laud. An article from Mr. Chandler's pen may be looked for in every number, and this will cause each number to be looked for anxiously.

Editors Looking Up. – It is expected that an early number of "Graham" will be graced with a portrait of our distinguished rival of the "Lady's Book," that gentleman having "in the handsomest manner," as they say in theatricals, sat for a picture of his goodly countenance and proportions. At our command this has been transferred to steel, to be handed over to the readers of "Graham," by Armstrong, an artist whose ability is a fair warrant for a fine picture. Now if any of our fair readers fall in love with Godey, we shall take it as a formal slight, and shall insist upon having our face run through an edition of a magazine, to be gazed at and loved by thousands of as fine looking people as can be crowded upon a subscription book.

W. E. Tucker, Esq. – We are very much gratified to be able to state, that an arrangement has been made by the proprietors of "Graham" with Mr. W. E. Tucker, whose exquisite title-pages and other gems in the way of engraving are familiar to our readers, and that for the year 1849, he engraves exclusively for Graham's Magazine.

This is but the beginning of arrangements proposed to revive the original splendor of the pictorial department of this magazine, while the literary arrangements are in the same style of liberality which has ever distinguished "Graham." "There is a good time a-coming boys" in 1849.

Sketches From Europe. – In the present absorbing state of affairs abroad, it will please our readers to know, that we have engaged an accomplished writer to furnish sketches of European manners, events and society, such as escape the daily journals, for the pages of the magazine. These sketches will occasionally be illustrated with engravings of scenery and persons taken on the spot, and cannot fail to add to the value of "Graham."

Gems From Late Readings. – We shall introduce into the next number of Graham a department which we think cannot fail to be of interest, by selections from authors which it is not possible for all the readers of Graham to have seen. Culling such passages as may strike us in our reading as worthy of wide circulation and preservation.