his own spoken jokes. Our author is uniformly guilty of this mistake. He has an absurd fashion, also, of informing the reader, at the conclusion of each of his anecdotes, that, however good the anecdote might be, he (the reader) cannot enjoy it to the full extent in default of the manner in which it was orally narrated. He has no business to say anything of the kind. It is his duty to convey the manner not less than the matter of his narratives.

But we may say of these latter that, in general, they have the air of being remembered rather than invented. No man who has seen much of the rough life of the camp will fail to recognise among them many very old acquaintances. Some of them are as ancient as the hills, and have been, time out of mind, the common property of the bivouac. They have been narrated orally all the world over. The chief merit of the writer is that he has been the first to collect and to print them. It is observable, in fact, that the second volume of the work is very far inferior to the first. The author seems to have exhausted his whole hoarded store in the beginning. His conclusion is barren indeed, and but for the historical details (for which he has. no claim to merit) would be especially prosy and dull. Now the true invention never exhausts itself. It is mere cant and ignorance to talk of the possibility of the really imaginative man's “writing himself out." His soul but derives nourishment from the streams that flow therefrom. As well prate about the aridity of the eternal ocean εξ ούπερ παντες ποταμοι. So long as the universe of thought shall furnish matter for novel combinations, so long will the spirit of true genius be original, be exhaustless-be itself.

A few cursory observations. The book is filled to overflowing with songs of very doubtful excellence, the most of which are put into the mouth of Micky Free, an amusing Irish servant of O'Malley's, and are given as his impromptu effusions. The subject of the improvisos is always the matter in hand at the moment of composition. author evidently prides himself upon his poetical powers, about which the less we say the better; but if anything were wanting to assure us of his absurd ignorance and

The

inappreciation of Art, we should find the fullest assurance in the mode in which these doggerel verses are introduced. The occasional sentiment with which the volumes are interspersed there is an absolute necessity for skipping.

Can anybody tell us what is meant by the affectation of the word L'envoy which is made the heading of two prefaces?

That portion of the account of the battle of Waterloo which gives O'Malley's experiences while a prisoner, and in close juxtaposition to Napoleon, bears evident traces of having been translated, and very literally too, from a French manuscript.

The English of the work is sometimes even amusing. We have continually, for example, eat, the present, for ate, the perfect-page 17. At page 16 we have this delightful sentence: "Captain Hammersley, however, never took further notice of me, but continued to recount, for the amusement of those about, several excellent stories of his military career, which I confess were heard with every test of delight by all save me." At page 357 we have some sage talk about "the entire of the army;" and at page 368 the accomplished O'Malley speaks of "drawing a last look upon his sweetheart." These things arrest our attention as we open the book at random. It abounds in them, and in vulgarisms even much worse than they.

But why speak of vulgarisms of language? There is a disgusting vulgarism of thought which pervades and contaminates this whole production, and from which a delicate or lofty mind will shrink as from a pestilence. Not the least repulsive manifestation of this leprosy is to be found in the author's blind and grovelling worship of mere rank. Of the Prince-Regent, that filthy compound of all that is bestial-that lazar-house of all moral corruption-he scruples not to speak in terms of the grossest adulation-sneering at Edmund Burke in the same villanous breath in which he extols the talents, the graces, and the virtues of George the Fourth! That any man, to-day, can be found so degraded in heart as to style this reprobate "one who, in every feeling of his nature, and in every feature of his deport

ment was every inch a prince"-is matter for grave reflection and sorrowful debate. The American, at least, who shall peruse the concluding pages of the book now under review, and not turn in disgust from the base sycophancy which infects them, is unworthy of his country and his name. But the truth is, that a gross and contracted soul renders itself unquestionably manifest in almost every line of the composition.

And this-this is the work, in respect to which its author, aping the airs of intellect, prates about his "haggard cheek,” his "sunken eye," his "aching and tired head," his "nights of toil," and (good heavens) his "days of thought!" That the thing is popular we grant-while that we cannot deny the fact we grieve. But the career of true taste is onwardand now moves more vigorously onward than ever-and the period perhaps is not hopelessly distant, when, in decrying the mere balderdash of such matters as "Charles O'Malley," we shall do less violence to the feelings and judgment even of the populace, than, we much fear, has

been done in this article.

FRANCIS MARRYATT.

IT has been well said that "the success of certain works may be traced to sympathy between the author's mediocrity of ideas, and mediocrity of ideas on the part of the public." In commenting on this passage, Mrs. Gore, herself a shrewd philosopher, observes that, whether as regards men or books, there exists an excellence too excellent for general favour. To "make a hit"-to captivate the public eye, ear, or understanding without a certain degree of merit-is impossible; but the "hardest hit" is seldom made, indeed we may say never made, by the highest merit. When we wrote the word seldom we were thinking of Dickens and the "Curiosity Shop," a work unquestionably of "the highest merit," and which at a first glance appears to have made

the most unequivocal of "hits"-but we suddenly remembered that the compositions called "Harry Lorrequer" and "Charles O'Malley" had borne the palm from "The Curiosity Shop" in point of what is properly termed popularity.

There can be no question, we think, that the philosophy of all this is to be found in the apothegm with which we began. Marryatt is a singular instance of its truth. has always been a very popular writer in the most rigorous sense of the word. His books are essentially "mediocre.” His ideas are the common property of the mob, and have been their common property time out of mind. We look throughout his writings in vain for the slightest indication. of originality-for the faintest incentive to thought. His plots, his language, his opinions are neither adapted nor intended for scrutiny. We must be contented with them as sentiments, rather than as ideas; and properly to estimate them, even in this view, we must bring ourselves into a sort of identification with the sentiment of the mass. Works composed in this spirit are sometimes purposely so composed by men of superior intelligence, and here we call to mind the Chansons of Béranger. But usually they are the natural exponent of the vulgar thought in the person of a vulgar thinker. In either case they claim for themselves that which, for want of a more definite expression, has been called by critics nationality. Whether this nationality in letters is a fit object for high-minded ambition, we cannot here pause to inquire. If it is, then Captain Marryatt occupies a more desirable position than, in our heart, we are willing to award him.,

66

Joseph Rushbrook" is not a book with which the critic should occupy many paragraphs. It is not very dissimilar to "Poor Jack," which latter is, perhaps, the best specimen of its author's cast of thought, and national manner, although inferior in interest to "Peter Simple."

The plot can only please those who swallow the probabilities of "Sinbad the Sailor," or "Jack and the Bean

*

"Joseph Rushbrook, or the Poacher." By Captain Marryatt, author of "Peter Simple," "Jacob Faithful," etc. etc. Two volumes

Stalk' - or, we should have said, more strictly, the incidents; for of plot, properly speaking, there is none at all.

Joseph Rushbrook is an English soldier who, having long served his country and received a wound in the head, is pensioned and discharged. He becomes a poacher, and educates his son (the hero of the tale, and also named Joseph) to the same profession. A pedlar, called Byres, is about to betray the father, who avenges himself by shooting him. The son takes the burden of the crime upon himself, and flees the country. A reward is offered for his apprehension-a reward which one Furness, a schoolmaster, is very anxious to obtain. This Furness dogs the footsteps of our hero much as Fagin, the Jew, dogs those of Oliver Twist, forcing him to quit place after place, just as he begins to get comfortably settled. In thus roaming about, little Joseph meets with all kinds of outrageously improbable adventures; and not only this, but the reader is bored to death with the outrageously improbable adventures of every one with whom little Joseph comes in contact. Good fortune absolutely besets him. Money falls at his feet wherever he goes, and he has only to stoop and pick it up. At length he arrives at the height of prosperity, and thinks he is entirely rid of Furness, when Furness re-appears. That Joseph should, in the end, be brought to trial for the pedlar's murder is so clearly the author's design, that he who runs may read it, and we naturally suppose that his persecutor, Furness, is to be the instrument of this evil. We suppose also, of course, that in bringing this misfortune upon our hero, the schoolmaster will involve himself in ruin, in accordance with the common ideas of poetical justice. But no;-Furness, being found in the way, is killed off, accidentally, having lived and plotted to no ostensible purpose, through the better half of the book. Circumstances that have nothing to do with the story involve Joseph in his trial. He refuses to divulge the real secret of the murder, and is sentenced to transportation. The elder Rushbrook, in the meantime, has avoided suspicion and fallen heir to a great property. Just as his son is