nour:' and some of whom are now only known to us, because he did them the honour so to address them. Our plebeian disposition renders us quite as well contented with his more familiar effusions. We should have been glad, no doubt, to see Scipio's deportment to consuls and prætors; but, as far as our own amusement is concerned, we would rather have requested admission to his parties with Lælius, when the chief object was gathering cockle-shells. We, therefore, receive with gratitude these additions to the Swiftiana, and could point out many passages in which they are absolutely necessary to explain those formerly published. Thus, in the admirable epistle from Swift's cook-maid to Sheridan, she charges him with an offence towards the Dean, not hitherto to be traced in their poetical correspondence: 'You said you would eat grass on his grave?—A Christian eat grass! Whereby you show that you are either a goose or an ass.' In one of the poems here printed for the first time, we find the couplet supposed to have excited the damsel's indignation: Sheridan, upbraided as the bird of the capitol, answers I'll write while I have half an eye in head; my I'll write while I live, and I'll write when you're dead; This publication also contains two original letters from the Dean, both highly valuable and characteristic. In the first, addressed to Dr. Jenny, he vindicates himself from the absurd and invidious accusation that the incomparable piece of humour, called Hamilton's Bawn, was a libel on Sir Arthur Acheson, and his lady. In the second letter, addressed to the Reverend Mr. Brandreth, the Dean gives a picture of Ireland, such as he alone could draw, and even he but in the very spring-tide of his misanthropy. 'If you are not an excellent philosopher, I allow you personate one perfectly well; and if you believe yourself, I heartily envy you; for I never yet saw in Ireland a spot of earth two feet wide, that had not in it something to displease. I think I once was in your county, Tipperary, which is like the rest of the whole kingdom, a bare face of nature, without houses or plantations: filthy cabins, miserable, tattered, half starved creatures, scarce in human shape; one insolent, ignorant, oppressive squire to be found in twenty miles riding; a parish-church to be found only in a summer day's journey, in comparison of which an English farmer's barn is a cathedral; a bog of fifteen miles round; every meadow a slough, and every hill a mixture of rock, heath, and marsh; and every male and female, from the farmer inclusive to the day-labourer, infallibly a thief, and consequently a beggar, which in this island are terms convertible. The Shannon is rather a lake than a river, and has not the sixth part of the stream that runs under London Bridge There is not an acre of land in Ireland turned to half its advantage; yet it is better improved than the people: and all these evils are effects of English tyranny; so your sons and grandchildren will find to their sorrow. Cork indeed was a place of trade; but for some years past is gone to decay; and the wretched merchants, instead of being dealers, are dwindled into pedlars and cheats. I desire you will not write such accounts to your friends in England. Did you ever see one cheerful countenance among our country vulgar? unless once a year at a fair or on a holiday, when some poor rogue happened to get drunk, and starved the whole week after. You will give a very different account of your winter campaign, when you can't walk five yards from your door without being mired to your knees, nor ride half a mile without being in a slough to your saddle-skirts; when your landlord must send twenty miles for yeast, before he can brew or bake; and the neighbours for six miles round must club to kill a mutton. Pray take care of damps, and when you leave your bedchamber, let a fire be made, to last till night; and after all, if a stocking happens to fall off a chair, you may wring it next morning. -Inunc, et tecum versus meditare canoros." These letters are added by Mr. Malone to Dr. Barrett's collection. upon It only remains to notice the concluding pages, which are filled by the Dean's remarks on Burnet's History of his own Times. Swift's decided hatred to the Bishop of Sarum had already displayed itself in his poignant ironical preface to the Introduction of his third vovolume on the Reformation. Nor is his pen more merciful the former occasion, while, recording on the margin, the Bishop's slips in style, facts, and politics. Burnet has now nearly found his level. And though his clumsy and slovenly language, his extreme personal vanity, his gross and inconsistent credulity, will prevent his ever laying claim to the title of an historian; yet, as a writer of memoirs, his spirit of honesty and of liberty, his intimate acquaintance with the great men and important transactions of his time, place his work above the desultory criticism even of Swift. The wrath of the Dean is chiefly excited by the passages in which the high church clergy are assailed, or the low churchmen exalted, or the sectaries apologized for. It usually vents itself in the pithy annotations of Ah, rogue! dog! a Scotch dog! partial dog!' and so forth. In a few places the remarks are curious, and corroborate or contradict, on authority, the facts in the text. In most they are sarcastic, as for example: Burnet having stated that Paradise Lost' was esteemed the beautifulest and perfectest poem that ever was writ, at least in our language.' Swift adds, A mistake-for it is in English.' Again, the Bishop having said, that Charles II. never treated Nell Gwynn with the decencies of a mistress,' the shrewd and malicious commentator asks, Pray what decencies are these?' And Burnet having stated that the French released 25,000 Dutch prisoners for 50,000 crowns, Swift exclaims, 'What, ten shillings a piece! By much too dear for a Dutchman.' These may serve as a specimen of the remarks. But by far the most witty sarcasm refers to the Earl of Argyle, described by Burnet as a solemn sort of man, grave, sober, and free of all scandalous vices:' Swift, 'as a man is free of a corporation, he means.' Upon the whole we dismiss this volume with warm approbation of Dr. Barrett's zeal in the cause which he has undertaken. It gives us sincere pleasure to see those labouring in the cause of literature, whose academical situation and offices afford them leisure and opportunity to ply effectually their honourable task. We cannot, it is true, extend our unlimited approbation to all parts of the learned editor's essay; but he knows well 'non cuivis,' &c. and if the plummet of our understanding be not altogether equal to sound the depth of his logic, we readily acknowledge that he is not bound to find us both argument and comprehension. In short, we request him to believe, that we have read with attention the rules for conducting literary controversy, which the learned Mr. Bickerstaff insists upon in his letter to Partridge, are sensible that the cause of useful knowledge cannot be advanced if men of public spirit are superciliously treated for their ingenious attempts, and only differ from him after the modest manner that becomes a philosopher, and pace tanti viri. The work is published separately; but it is also incorporated with the new edition of Swift's works, published by Mr. John Nicholls. ART. XVI. Caledonian Sketches, or a Tour through Scotland in 1807. To which is prefixed an Explanatory Address to the Public upon a recent Trial. By Sir John Carr, pp. 541, 4to. London, Matthews aud Leigh, 1809.. HE advice of the Giant Moulineau to a reciter, Je vous prie, Telier mon ami, commençez par le commencement, is too often neglected. We, however, admonished by a recent event,* new in our high office, and anxious to discharge its duties with unexampled fidelity, actually read the explanatory address prefixed to this volume, before we proceeded on the Caledonian Sketches. It is, in sooth, a piece of very tragical mirth, in which we hardly knew whether to sympathize with the wounded feelings of a good-natured, well-meaning man, or to laugh at the ambiguous expressions in which he couches his sorrow and indignation upon a very foolish subject. * See p. 43. The trial, in which Sir John Carr sued the editor of a satiric work, called 'My Pocket Book', for damages, as a libel on his literary fame, must be fresh in the memory of every reader. The Address displays great anxiety to ascertain the precise grounds upon which the action was commenced; but there is no little embarrassment and confusion in bottoming the case, as will appear from the opening of the subject. 'Had this attack been announced as a travesty, the Public would have regarded it as a burlesque, and I should have been as much disposed as any one to have smiled at what humour it might have possessed. Indeed I should have deemed it, in some measure, an honour; for, as the nature of travesty is laughable deformity, the original must at least possess some symmetry, before it could be twisted into deformity. Nay, I should have felt myself flattered to have been placed in the same line of attack in which many illustrious literary characters have been assailed, although immeasurably removed from them in literary reputation. I should also have reflected that the Public would not be interested in the travesty of an unknown author. But many, who have never read the Tour in Ireland, have considered the quotations as authentic, and the comment as fair and candid. I am placed before a mirror that distorts, and the mirror is thought to represent me faithfully.' p. 4. We suspect that the author of this passage remained a little too long in the 'southern and western parts of Ireland, to be an absolute stranger to the national mode of ratiocination. If a work be announced as a burlesque it must undoubtedly be regarded as a travesty, which is pretty much the same thing. But although it be not announced as a burlesque, it by no means follows that an action lies against the author, because the public insist upon mistaking for grave matter of fact what was intended for raillery. The readers are then to be blamed more than the satirist; and indeed, so dull was our apprehension in this very case, that having dipped into My Pocket Book,' and afterwards heard of a suit at law, we could not but conclude that Sir John had commenced it not on the score of libel, but on that of piracy: for whatever the author may have intended, the imitation had all the merit of being as prosing as the original, with the sole advantage (certainly no inconsiderable one) of being much shorter. But Sir John does not rest his case here. He proceeds to state that the frontispiece of this publication attempted personally to degrade him in a point of view which had no reference to his travels.' And again, In my work I have mentioned, that the cruel custom of yoking the plough to the tail of the drawing horse, which once existed in the uncivilized parts of Ireland, has for some time past been discontinued; yet, in this print, I am represented in the attitude of making a drawing of this barbarous usage; and, if such print be ad mitted to be fair criticism, I am made by the artist's pencil to assert that the custom still endures. In fact I am assured that I have already incurred the displeasure of some of the Irish, who have not perused my work, and who have been misled by this print, for having, as they thought, in this instance thrown an odium upon the character of their peasantry. To return to the action, the frontispiece caricature, and the explanation, constituted the sole ground of my legal complaint.' p. 6. This ground of complaint appears to us still more fantastical than that which he stated for the purpose of abandoning it. For an author has certainly some right in equity, if not at common law, to complain of the maladresse of a satirical satellite, who shaped his irony so awkwardly that all men took it for sober truth. But that any human being upon either side of St. George's Channel could seriously draw a conclusion, as matter of fact, from a caricature print, is one of the most whimsical inuendos which a declaration ever attached to a libel. There are twenty prints in the windows of St. James's-street, representing the highest characters in the most absurd attitudes and employments; by each of which, no doubt, a certain inference is intended, but we suppose something very different from the emblem offered to the eye. If a group of forlorn statesmen were to be presented in the shape of pigs possessed with an evil spirit, and precipitating themselves into the sea, would an action lie at their instance against the caricaturist, not because they were ridiculed for a noble abandonment of their places, but because he might mean to infer that the nine-farrow' had literally jumped from Dover Cliffs, in order to take the shortest road to Calais ! While Sir John Carr is thus puzzled to shape a legal ground for his action, we cannot but feel some sympathy in his distress; for although he may have done very ill to go to law, it is possible he may do very well to be angry; and it is some suspicion that his resentment is neither unprovoked nor unjustifiable, that restrains our inclination to smile at the legal distinctions which he makes concerning it. As My Pocket-Book' is a burlesque, it pleaseth him well, but in respect it is a satire, it is naught; in regard it is criticism, it may be the "palladium of literature," but in respect it was actively dispersed, it is a very vile work; as it is a book, look you, it fits his humour well, but in regard it hath an engraved frontispiece, it goeth much against his stomach! But Sir John hath a fellow sufferer in this matter, whom it is not meet to pass without notice. 'I have only one observation more to make, which I owe in justice to myself, and my late publisher, Sir Richard Phillips, who has been accused of having, from objects of personal feeling, prompted me to bring the action to which I have adverted. I can most solemnly declare that he never excited me to such a measure.' |