Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 339, January, 1844

The work of Achilles Tatius, with all its blemishes and defects, appears to have been highly popular among the Greeks of the lower empire. An epigram is still extant, attributed to the Emperor Leo, the philosopher,8 in which it is landed as an example of chaste and faithful love: and it was esteemed as a model of romantic composition from the elegance of its style and diction, in which Heretius ranks the author above Heliodorus, though he at the same time severely criticizes him for want of originality, accusing him of having borrowed all the interesting passages in his work from the Ethiopics. In common with Heliodorus, Tatius has found a host of followers among the later Greeks, some of whom (as the learned critic just quoted, observes) have transcribed, rather than imitated him. In the "Hysminias and Hysmine" of Eumathius, a wretched production of the twelfth century, not only many of the incidents, but even of the names, as Sostratus, Sosthenes, and Anthia*, are taken from Clitophon and Leucippe: and to so servile an extent is this plagiarism carried, that two books out of the nine, of which the romance consists, are filled with descriptions of paintings; while the plot, not very intelligible at the best, is still further perplexed by the extraordinary affectation of making nearly all the names alike; thus, the hero and heroine are Hysminias and Hysmine, the towns are Aulycomis, Eurycomis, Artycomis, &c. In all these works, the outline is the same; the lovers undergo endless buffetings by sea and land, imaginary deaths, and escapes from marauders; but not a spark of genius or fancy enlivens these dull productions, which, sometimes maudlin and bombastic, often indecent, would defy the patience of the most determined novel reader. One of these writers, Xenophon of Ephesus, the author of the "Ephesiacs, or Habrocomas and Anthia," is commended by Politian for the classical purity of his language, in which he considers him scarcely inferior to his namesake the historian: but the work has little else to recommend it. The two principal personages are represented as miracles of personal beauty; and the women fall in love with Habrocomas, as well as the men with Anthia, literally by dozens at a time: the plot, however differs from that of the others in marrying them at the commencement, and sending them through the ordinary routine of dangers afterwards. The Ephesiacs are, however, noticeable from its having been supposed by Mr Douce, (Illustrations of Shakspeare, ii. 198,) that the catastrophe in Romeo and Juliet was originally borrowed from one of the adventures of Anthia, who, when separated from her husband, is rescued from banditti by Perilaus, governor of Cilicia, and by him destined for his bride. Unable to evade his solicitations, she procures from the "poverty, not the will" of an aged physician named Eudoxus, what she supposes to be a draught of poison, but which is really an opiate. She is laid with great pomp, loaded with gems and costly ornaments, in a vault; and on awakening, finds herself in the hands of a crew of pirates, who have broken open her sepulchre in order to rifle the treasures which they knew to have been deposited there. "This work," (observes Mr Douce,) "was certainly not published nor translated in the time of Luigi da Porto, the original narrator of the story of Romeo and Juliet: but there is no reason why he might not have seen a copy of the original in MS. We might enumerate several more of these later productions of the same school; but a separate analysis of each would be both tedious and needless, as none present any marked features of distinction from those already noticed. They are all, more or less, indifferent copies either from Heliodorus or Achilles Tatius; the outline of the story being generally borrowed from one or the other of these sources, while in point of style, nearly all appear to have taken as their model the florid rhetorical display and artificial polish of language which characterize the latter. Their redeeming point is the high position uniformly assigned to the female characters, who are neither immured in the Oriental seclusion of the harem, nor degraded to household drudges, like the Athenian ladies in the polished age of Pericles:9 but mingle without restraint in society as the friends and companions of the other sex, and are addressed in the language of admiration and respect. But these pleasing traits are not sufficient to atone for the improbability of the incidents, relieved neither by the brilliant fancy of the East, nor the lofty deeds of the romances of chivalry: and the reader, wearied by the repetition of similar scenes and characters, thinly disguised by change of name and place, finds little reason to regret that "the children of the marriage of Theagenes and Chariclea," as these romances are termed by a writer quoted by d'Israeli in the "Curiosities of Literature"—have not continued to increase and multiply up to our own times.

THE NEW ART OF PRINTING.

BY A DESIGNING DEVIL

"Aliter non fit, avite, liber."—MARTIAL.

It is more than probable that, at the first discovery of that mightiest of arts, which has so tended to facilitate every other—the art of printing—many old-fashioned people looked with a jealous eye on the innovation. Accustomed to a written character, their eyes became wearied by the crabbedness and formality of type. It was like travelling on the paved and rectilinear roads of France, after winding among the blooming hedgerows of England; and how dingy and graceless must have appeared the first printed copy of the Holy Bible, to those accustomed to luxuriate in emblazoned missals, amid all the pride, pomp, and vellum of glorious MS.!

Dangerous and democratic, too, must have appeared the new art, which, by plebeianizing knowledge and enlightening the mass, deprived the law and the prophets of half their terrors, and disrobed priestcraft and kingcraft of their mystery. We can imagine that, as soon as a printed book ceased to be a great rarity, it became an object of great abhorrence.

There were many, no doubt, to prophesy, as on occasion of every new invention, that it was all very well for a novelty; but that the thing would not, and could not last! How were the poor copyists to get their living if their occupation was taken from them? How were so many monasteries to be maintained which had subsisted on manuscriptum? And, then, what prince in his right senses would allow a printing-press to be set up in his dominions—a source of sedition and heresy—an implement of disaffection and schism? The free towns, perhaps, might foster this pernicious art, and certain evilly-disposed potentates wink at the establishment of type-founderies in their states. But the great powers of Europe knew better! They would never connive at this second sowing of the dragon's teeth of Cadmus.

Thus, probably, they argued; becoming reconciled, in process of time, to the terrible novelty. Print-books became almost as easy to read as manuscript; soon as cheap, and at length of a quarter the price, or even less; till, two centuries later, benefit of clergy ceased to be a benefit, books were plenty as blackberries, and learning a thing for the multitude. According to Dean Swift's account, the chaplain's time hung heavy on his hands, for my lady had sermon books of her own, and could read; nay, my lady's woman had jest books of her own, and wanted none of his nonsense! The learned professions, or black arts, lost at least ninety-five per cent in importance; and so rapid as been the increase of the evil, that, at this time of day, it is a hard matter to impose on any clodpole in Europe! Instead of signing with their marks, the kings of modern times have turned ushers; instead of reading with difficulty, we have a mob of noblemen who write with ease; and, now-a-days, it is every duke, ay, and every duchess her own book-maker!

A year or two hence, however, and all this will have become obsolete.—Nous avons changé tout cela!—No more letter-press! Books, the small as well as the great, will have been voted a great evil. There will be no gentlemen of the press. The press itself will have ceased to exist.

For several years past it has been frankly avowed by the trade that books have ceased to sell; that the best works are a drug in the market; that their shelves groan, until themselves are forced to follow the example.

Descend to what shifts they may in order to lower their prices, by piracy from other booksellers, or clipping and coining of authors—no purchasers! Still, the hope prevailed for a time among the lovers of letters, that a great glut having occurred, the world was chewing the cud of its repletion; that the learned were shut up in the Bodleian, and the ignorant battening upon the circulating libraries; that hungry times would come again!

But this fond delusion has vanished. People have not only ceased to purchase those old-fashioned things called books, but even to read them! Instead of cutting new works, page by page, people cut them altogether! To far-sighted philosophers, indeed, this was a state of things long foreshown. It could not be otherwise. The reading world was a sedentary world. The literary public was a public lying at anchor. When France delighted in the twelve-volume novels of Mademoiselle de Scudéri, it drove in coaches and six, at the rate of four miles an hour; when England luxuriated in those of Richardson, in eight, it drove in coaches and four, at the rate of five. A journey was then esteemed a family calamity; and people abided all the year round in their cedar parlours, thankful to be diverted by the arrival of the Spectator, or a few pages of the Pilgrim's Progress, or a new sermon. To their unincidental lives, a book was an event.

Those were the days worth writing for! The fate of Richardson's heroines was made a national affair; and people interceded with him by letter to "spare Clarissa," as they would not now intercede with her Majesty to spare a new Effie Deans. The successive volumes of Pope's Iliad were looked for with what is called "breathless" interest, while such political sheets as the Drapier's Letters, or Junius, set the whole kingdom in an uproar! And now, if Pope, or Swift, or Fielding, or Johnson, or Sterne, were to rise from the grave, MS. in hand, the most adventurous publisher would pass a sleepless night before he undertook the risk of paper and print; would advise a small edition, and exact a sum down in ready money, to be laid out in puffs and advertisements! "Even then, though we may get rid of a few copies to the circulating libraries," he would observe, "do not expect, sir, to obtain readers. A few old maids in the county towns, and a few gouty old gentlemen at the clubs; are the only persons of the present day who ever open a book!"

And who can wonder? Who has leisure to read? Who cares to sit down and spell out accounts of travels which he can make at less cost than the cost of the narrative? Who wants to peruse fictitious adventures, when railroads and steamboats woo him to adventures of his own? Egypt was once a land of mystery; now, every lad, on leaving Eton, yachts it to the pyramids. India was once a country to dream of over a book. Even quartoes, if tolerably well-seasoned with suttees and sandalwood, went down; now, every genteel family has its "own correspondent," per favour of the Red Sea; and the best printed account of Cabul would fall stillborn from the press. As to Van Dieman's Land, it is vulgar as the Isle of Dogs; and since people have steamed it backwards and forwards across the Atlantic more easily than formerly across the Channel, every woman chooses to be her own Trollope—every man his own Boz!

For some time after books had ceased to find a market, the periodicals retained their vogue; and even till very lately, newspapers found readers. But the period at length arrived, when even the leisure requisite for the perusal of these lighter pages, is no longer forthcoming. People are busy ballooning or driving; shooting like stars along railroads; or migrating like swallows or wild-geese. It has been found, within the current year, impossible to read even a newspaper!

The march of intellect, however, luckily keeps pace with the necessities of the times; and no sooner was it ascertained, that reading-made-easy was difficult to accomplish, than a new art was invented for the more ready transmission of ideas. The fallacy of the proverb, that "those who run may read," being established, modern science set about the adoption of a medium, available to those sons of the century who are always on the run. Hence, the grand secret of ILLUSTRATION.—Hence the new art of printing!

The pictorial printing-press is now your only wear! Every thing is communicated by delineation. We are not told, but shown how the world is wagging. The magazines sketch us a lively article, the newspapers vignette us, step by step, a royal tour. The beauties of Shakspeare are imprinted on the minds of the rising generation, in woodcuts; and the poetry of Byron engraver in their hearts, by means of the graver. Not a boy in his teens has read a line of Don Quixote or Gil Blas, though all have their adventures by heart; while Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" has been committed to memory by our daughters and wives, in a series of exquisite illustrations. Every body has La Fontaine by heart, thanks to the pencil of Granville, which requires neither grammar nor dictionary to aid its interpretations; and even Defoe—even the unparalleled Robinson Crusoe—is devoured by our ingenuous youth in cuts and come again.

At present, indeed, the new art of printing is in its infancy, but it is progressing so rapidly, that the devils of the old will soon have a cold birth of it! Views of the Holy Land are superseding even the Holy Scriptures; and a pictorial Blackstone is teaching the ideas of the sucking lawyers how to shoot. Nay, Buchan's "Domestic Medicine" has (proh pudor!) its illustrated edition.

The time saved to an active public by all this, is beyond computation. All the world is now instructed by symbols, as formerly the deaf and dumb; and instead of having to peruse a tedious penny-a-line account of the postilion of the King of the French misdriving his Majesty, and his Majesty's august family, over a draw-bridge into a moat at Tréport, a single glance at a single woodcut places the whole disaster graphically before us; leaving us nine minutes and a half of the time we must otherwise have devoted to the study of the case, to dispose of at our own will and pleasure; to start, for instance, for Chelsea, and be back again by the steam-boat, before our mother knows we are out.

The application of the new art is of daily and hourly extension. The scandalous Sunday newspapers have announced an intention of evading Lord Campbell's act, by veiling their libels in caricature. Instead of writing slander and flat blasphemy, they propose to draw it, and not draw it mild. The daily prints will doubtless follow their example. No more Jenkinsisms in the Morning Post, concerning fashionable parties. A view of the duchess's ball-room, or of the dining-table of the earl, will supersede all occasion for lengthy fiddle-faddle. The opera of the night before will be described in a vignette—the ballet in a tail-piece; and we shall know at a glance whether Cerito and Elssler performed their pas meritoriously, by the number of bouquets depicted at their feet.

On the other hand, instead of column after column of dry debates, we shall know sufficiently who were the speakers of the preceding night, by a series of portraits—each having an annexed trophy, indicative of the leading points of his oration. Members of both Houses will be, of course, daguerreotyped for the use of the morning papers; and photographic likenesses of the leaders of ton be supplied gratis to the leaders of the press.

How far more interesting a striking sketch of a banquet, containing portraits of undoubted authenticity, to the matter-of-fact announcements of the exploded letter-press—that "yesterday his Grace the Duke of Wellington entertained at dinner, at Apsley House, the Earls of Aberdeen and Liverpool, the Dukes of Richmond and Buccleuch, the Master of the Horse, the Lord Chancellor, Sir Robert Peel, Sir James Graham, Sir Frederick Trench, Colonel Gurwood, and M. Algernon Greville!" Who has patience for the recapitulation of a string of names, when a group of faces may be placed simultaneously before him?

And then, accounts of races! How admirably will they be concentrated into a delineation of the winner passing the post—the losers distances; and what disgusting particulars of boxing matches shall we avoid by a spirited etching. Think of despatches from India, (one of Lord Ellenborough's XXXX,) published in a series of groupings worthy the frescoes of the tomb of Psammis. As to the affairs of China, we shall henceforward derive as much pleasure from the projects of Sir Henry Pottinger, cut in wood by the Morning Herald, as in surveying the Mandarins sailing on buffaloes through the air, or driving in junks over meadows, in one of Wedgewood's soup plates!

It has long been the custom for advertisers in the continental journals to typify their wares. The George Robinses of Brussels, for instance, embody their account of some exquisite villa in a charming perspective of the same, or of a capital town mansion in a grim likeness; while the carossiers, who have town chariots or family coaches to dispose of, make it known in the most designing manner. The consequence is, that the columns of certain foreign papers bear a striking likeness to a child's alphabet, such as "A was an archer, and shot at a frog." Among ourselves, this practice is at present only partially adopted. We are all familiar with the shape of Mr Cox Savory's tea-pots, and Messrs Dondney's point-device men in buckram; while Mordan acquaints us, with much point, how many varieties he has invented of pencil-cases and toothpicks. As to the London Wine Company, the new art has long imprinted upon our minds a mysterious notion of a series of vaults in the style of the Thames tunnel, frequented by figures armed with spigots and dark lanterns, that remind us of Guy Fawkes, and make us tremble for ourselves and Father Mathew! Loose notions of the stay-making trade have been circulated by the same medium; and we have noticed wood-blocks of wig-blocks, deservedly immortalizing the pernquier.

But consider what it will be when the system is adopted on a more comprehensive scale. The daily papers will present a series of designs, remarkable as those of the Glyptothek and Pinacothek at Munich; and in all probability, the artists of the prize cartoons will be engaged in behalf of the leading journals of Europe. Who cannot foresee her Majesty's drawing-room illustrated by Parris! Who cannot conceive the invasion of Britain outdone in an allegorical leading article: "Louis Philippe (in a Snooks-like attitude) inviting Queen Victoria to St Cloud; and the British lion lashing out its tail at the Coq Gaulois!"

As to the affairs of Spain, they will be a mine of wealth to the new press—L'Espagne Pittoresque will sell thousands more copies than Spain Constitutionalized; and let us trust that Sir George Hayter will instantly "walk his chalks," and secure us the Cortes in black and white.

The Greek character will now become easy to decipher; and the evening papers may take King Otho both off the throne and on. The designs of Russia have long been proverbial; but the exercise of the new art of printing may assign them new features. The representations of impartial periodicals will cut out, or out-cut De Custine; and while contemplating the well-favoured presentment of Nicholas I., we shall exclaim—"Is this a tyrant that I see before me?" Nothing will be easier then to throw the Poles into the shade of the picture, or to occupy the foreground with a brilliant review.

As to Germany, to embody her in the hieroglyphics of the new press, might be a study for Retsch; and who will care for the lumbering pages of Von Raumer, or the wishy-washy details of Kohl, when able, in an augenblick, to bring Berlin and Vienna before him; to study the Zollverein in the copy of the King of Prussia's cogitative countenance, and ascertain the views of Metternich concerning the elder branch of the Bourbons, by a cul de lampe in the Morning Chronicle!

We have little doubt of shortly seeing announcements—standing like tombstones in those literary cemeteries, the Saturday papers—of "A new work upon America, from the graver of George Cruickshank;" or "A new fashionable novel, (diamond edition,) from the accomplished pencil of H.B." Kenny Meadows will become the Byron of the day, Leech the Scott, Forrester the Marryatt, Phiz the Trollope; Stanfield and Turner will be epic poets, Landseer preside over the belles-lettres, and Webster and Stone become the epigrammatists and madrigalists of the press.

All this will, doubtless, throw a number of deserving persons out of employ. The writers, whose stock in trade consists of words rather than ideas, will find their way to Basinghall Street, prose will be at a discount, and long-windedness be accounted a distemper. A great variety of small Sapphos must turn seamstresses10, at three-halfpence a shirt instead of a penny a line; while the minor poets will have to earn a livelihood by writing invoice, instead of in verse. But this transposition of talent, and transition of gain, is no more than arose from the substitution of railroads for turnpike roads. By that innovation thousands of hard-working post-horses were left without rack or manger; and by the present arrangement, Clowes, Spottiswoode, and the authors who have served to afford matter for their types, will be driven from the field.

But the world (no longer to be called of letters, but of emblems) will be the gainer. It will be no longer a form of speech to talk of having "glanced at the morning papers," whose city article will, of course, be composed by artists skilled in drawing figures. The biographies of contemporary or deceased statesmen will be limned, not by Lord Brougham or Macaulay, but by the impartial hand of the Royal Academy; and the catacombs at Kensal Green, like those discovered by Belzoni on the banks of the Nile, exhibit their eulogistic inscriptions in hieroglyphics. By this new species of shorthand we might have embodied this very article in half a dozen sprightly etchings! But as the hapless inventor of the first great art of printing incurred, among his astounded contemporaries, the opprobrium of being in compact with the evil one, (whence, probably, the familiar appellation of printers' devils,) it behoves the early practitioners of the new art to look to their reputations! By economizing the time of the public, they may squander their own good repute. It is not every printer who can afford, like Benjamin Franklin, to be a reformer; and pending the momentum when (the schoolmasters being all abroad) the grand causeway of the metropolis shall become, as it were, a moving diorama, inflicting knowledge upon the million whether it will or no—let us content ourselves with birds'-eye views of passing events, by way of exhibiting the first rudiments of THE NEW ART OF PRINTING!

THE BANKING HOUSE

A HISTORY IN THREE PARTS. PART III

CHAPTER I.

SYMPTOMS OF ROTTENNESS

Michael Allcroft returned to his duties, tuned for labour, full of courage, and the spirit of enterprise and action. Discharged from the thrall which had hitherto borne hard upon his energies, and kept them down, he felt the blessed influence of perfect Liberty, and the youthful elasticity of mind and body that liberty and conscious strength engender. Devoted to the task that he had inflicted upon himself, he grudged every hour that kept him from the field of operations. Firm in his determination to realize, by his exertions, a sum of money equal to his parent's debts, and to redeem the estate from its insolvency, he was uneasy and impatient until he could resume his yoke, and press resolutely forward. Rich and independent as he was, in virtue of the fortune of his wife, he still spurned the idea of relying upon her for his release—for the means of rescuing his fathers name and house from infamy. No; he saw—he fancied that he saw a brighter way marked out before him. Industry, perseverance, and extreme attention would steer his bark steadily through the difficult ocean, and bring her safely into harbour: these he could command, for they depended upon himself whom he might trust. He had looked diligently into the transactions of the house for many years past, and the investigation was most satisfactory. Year after year, the business had increased—the profits had improved. The accumulations of his father must have been considerable when he entered upon his ruinous speculations. What was the fair inference to draw from this result? Why—that with the additional capital of his partners—the influx and extension of good business, and the application of his own resolute mind, a sum would be raised within a very few years, sufficient to reinstate the firm, to render it once more stable and secure. And then—this desirable object once effected, and the secret of the unfortunate position of the house never divulged—the income which would afterwards follow for his partners and himself, must be immense. It was this view of the subject that justified, to his mind, the means which he had used—that silenced self-reproof, when it accused him of artifice, and called him to account for the deception he had practised upon his colleagues. It must be acknowledged, that the plan which he proposed held out fair promise of ultimate success and that, reckoning upon the united will and assistance of his partners, he had good reason to look for an eventual release from all his difficulties and cares. Yet it was not to be. "We still have judgment here." Punishment still comes to us from those whom we would circumvent. It was in vain that Michael set foot in the Bank with an indomitable and eager spirit; in vain that he longed to grapple with his fate—resolute to overcome it. The world was against him. The battle was already decided. His first hard struggle for deliverance was coincident with his last hour of earthly peace.