of resistance. In several magazines and reviews, accordingly, Satan has been handled somewhat roughly, and the arts of the puffers have been exposed with good sense and spirit. We shall, therefore, be very concise. Of the two poems we rather prefer that on the Omnipresence of the Deity, for the same reason which induced Sir Thomas More to rank one bad book above another. "Marry, this is somewhat. This is rhyme. But the other is neither rhyme nor reason." Satan is a long soliloquy, which the Devil pronounces in five or six thousand lines of bad blank verse, concerning geography, politics, newspapers, fashionable society, theatrical amusements, Sir Walter Scott's novels, Lord Byron's poetry, and Mr. Martin's pictures. The new designs for Milton have, as was natural, particularly attracted the attention of a personage who occupies so conspicuous a place in them. Mr. Martin must be pleased to learn that, whatever may be thought of those performances on earth, they give full satisfaction in Pandæmonium, and that he is there thought to have hit off the likenesses of the various Thrones and Dominations very happily. The motto to the poem of Satan is taken from the Book of Job: "Whence comest thou? From going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it." And certainly Mr. Robert Montgomery has not failed to make his hero go to and fro, and walk up and down. With the exception, however, of this propensity to locomotion, Satan has not one Satanic quality. Mad Tom had told us that "the prince of darkness is a gentleman;"" but we had yet to learn that he is a respectable and pious gentleman, whose principal fault is that he is something of a twaddle and far too liberal of his good advice. That happy change in his character which Origen 3 anticipated, and of which Tillotson did not despair, seems to be rapidly taking place. Bad 1"A certain friend of Sir Thomas More's, taking great pains about a book which he intended to publish... brought it to Sir Thomas More to peruse it and pass his judgment upon it, which he did; and finding nothing therein worthy the press, he said to him with a grave countenance: that, if it were in verse, it would be more worthy. Upon which words he went immediately and turned it into verse, and then brought it to Sir Thomas again; who, looking thereon, said soberly: Yes marry, now it is somewhat, for now it is rhyme; whereas before it was neither rhyme nor reason" (Bacon, Apophthegms). 2" King Lear," act iii., scene 4. Origen, 185 (?)-254 (?), was perhaps the greatest theologian of the early Christian Church. He believed in the final restoration of all the lost, even of the devil. John Tillotson, 1630-1694, who belonged to the most liberal school of English theologians in the seventeenth century and whom William III. made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1691. habits are not eradicated in a moment. It is not strange, therefore, that so old an offender should now and then relapse for a short time into wrong dispositions. But to give him his due, as the proverb recommends, we must say that he always returns, after two or three lines of impiety, to his preaching style. We would seriously advise Mr. Montgomery to omit or alter about a hundred lines in different parts of this large volume, and to republish it under the name of "Gabriel.' The reflections of which it consists would come less absurdly, as far as there is a more and a less in extreme absurdity, from a good than from a bad angel. We can afford room only for a single quotation. We give one taken at random, neither worse nor better, as far as we can perceive, than any other equal number of lines in the book. The Devil goes to the play, and moralises thereon as follows: "Music and Pomp their mingling spirit shed Here we conclude. If our remarks give pain to Mr. Robert Montgomery, we are sorry for it. But, at whatever cost of pain to individuals, literature must be purified from this taint. And, to show that we are not actuated by any feeling of personal enmity towards him, we hereby give notice that, as soon as any book shall, by means of puffing, reach a second edition, our intention is to do unto the writer of it as we have done unto Mr. Robert Montgomery. TH JOHN BUNYAN DECEMBER, 1830 NOTE ON THE ESSAY HE story of Bunyan's life has been so often told, the Pilgrim's Progress has so often been the theme of critics that nothing more need here be said about the author and his work. Macaulay has extolled "the prose epic of English Puritanism" not unreasonably, but with his usual emphasis. A classic it certainly is; but a classic which addresses itself most forcibly to readers of a special temperament. Those who are to enjoy it to the utmost ought to be of English race and of Puritan lineage if not of Puritan opinions. Even such persons, perhaps, can scarcely enjoy it so profoundly as those who like Macaulay were allowed and encouraged to read it as children in a period when works of imagination addressed to children were few, and the pleasures of imagination were stinted by the scruples of austere elders. To a child the vivid allegory ceased to be an allegory at all, and became as Macaulay observes a tale of the adventures of real persons. One who had read Macaulay's essay before reading the Pilgrim's Progress might at first feel disappointed; but the case is so rare as not to deserve considering. JOHN BUNYAN The Pilgrim's Progress, with a Life of John Bunyan. BY ROBERT SOUTHEY, Esq. LL.D. Poet Laureate. Illustrated with Engravings. 8vo. London : 1830. TH HIS is an eminently beautiful and splendid edition of a book which well deserves all that the printer and the engraver can do for it. The Life of Bunyan is, of course, not a performance which can add much to the literary reputation of such a writer as Mr. Southey. But it is written in excellent English, and, for the most part, in an excellent spirit. Mr. Southey propounds, we need not say, many opinions from which we altogether dissent; and his attempts to excuse the odious persecution to which Bunyan was subjected have sometimes moved our indignation. But we will avoid this topic. We are at present much more inclined to join in paying homage to the genius of a great man than to engage in a controversy concerning church-government and toleration. We must not pass without notice the engravings with which this volume is decorated. Some of Mr. Heath's wood-cuts are admirably designed and executed. Mr. Martin's 1 illustrations do not please us quite so well. His Valley of the Shadow of Death is not that Valley of the Shadow of Death which Bunyan imagined. At all events, it is not that dark and horrible glen which has from childhood been in our mind's eye. The valley is a cavern: the quagmire is a lake: the straight path runs zigzag and Christian appears like a speck in the darkness of the immense vault. We miss, too, those hideous forms which make so striking a part of the description of Bunyan, and which Salvator Rosa 2 would have loved to draw. It is with unfeigned 1 John Martin, 1789-1854, was at one time highly esteemed as a painter of landscapes and historical pieces. He liked large canvases and vast subjects, such as the Fall of Nineveh" and the "Destruction of Herculaneum." Charles Lamb cited him as an instance of the want of imagination in contemporary art. " See p. 116. VOL. 1.-18 |