LITERARY LEAFLETS.

BY SIR NATHANIEL.

No. XXI. DR. CROLY.

FOR nearly forty years past, Dr. Croly has been distinguished in the paths of polite literature, by his contributions to the departments of poetry, history, biography, romance, and criticism. As a politician and a divine, he is one of the few surviving representatives of old-fashioned, consistent, leal-hearted conservatism in Church and State. Not High Church, if that implies sympathy with the opinions and practices of our Puseys and Denisons; not Low Church, if a penchant towards the technicals of the Clapham Sect, and the policy of the Evangelical Alliance, enters into that definition; not Broad Church, according to the modern Latitudinarians, as depicted in the Edinburgh Review;-but one of those staunch, steadfast, Church-of-England Protestants, whom we are wont to regard as the model clergy after the very mind and heart of good old George the Third. Exception, however, must be allowed to his peculiar views on Prophecy, which are dissonant enough from the harmony of the theological Georgium sidus.

Nowhere, probably, is Dr. Croly more emphatically and satisfactorily himself, than in his political memoir of Edmund Burke; a memoir which, had it but comprised also some account of the great statesman's home and private life, would have secured a far more prominent, and maybe a permanent, place in the world of books. The Doctor's enthusiastic appreciation of Burke, it does one good to follow; nor is his own style an unworthy vehicle of such eulogy-cast as it is in so similar a mould, and presenting so many features of high, and not merely mimic, relationship. The glow of affectionate reverence colours with hues warm and lustrous the pages of this biography. The biographer's own eloquence kindles high, when he revives for us the scene of the arch-Orator's parliamentary battles:

While he forewarns, denounces, launches forth,

Against all systems built on abstract rights,

Keen ridicule; the majesty proclaims

Of Institutes and Laws, hallowed by time;
Declares the vital power of social ties
Endeared by Custom; and with high disdain,
Exploding upstart Theory, insists

Upon the allegiance to which men are born*—

in times big with ominous change, which, "night by night, provoked
keen struggles, and black clouds of passion raised"-but when the
flightiest and the fiercest of the Orator's foemen would sit "rapt audi-
tors,'
‚” “dazzled beholders,”

When Wisdom, like the Goddess from Jove's brain,
Broke forth in armour of resplendent words,

Startling the Synod.

→ Wordsworth: "Prelude," book vii.

A companion work is the similarly executed éloge of William Pitt—in whose personal character Dr. Croly impressively records the "solid connexion of private virtues with public fidelity"-while he insists on the "heaven-born minister's" success as commensurate with the lofty integrity of his principles, and dwells with exultant pride on his achievements in rebuilding into one superb confederacy the broken system of Europe, and closing by an unexampled triumph an unexampled war, which menaced the dissolution of every tie of nations and of men.

It is a long tale of years since Dr. Croly won his first laurels in verse by his "Paris in 1815"*-a decided success, which he followed up by a variety of other poetical ventures,-for example, "The Angel of the World," an Arabian legend; "Sebastian," a Spanish tale; a comedy, entitled "Pride shall have a Fall;" "Catiline," a tragedy; "Gems from the Antique;" numerous lyrics and occasional verses, "Scenes from Scripture," &c., &c. We cannot but assent to a lately deceased critichimself a poet, tender and true-who, while according to Dr. Croly, as a poet, many great and shining qualities; a rich command of language, an ear finely attuned to musical expression, a fertile and lucid conceptive power, and an intellect at once subtle and masculine; yet observes, even of the best of his poems, that they are rather effusions than compositions, and abound with passages of mere declamation however eloquent, and, not unfrequently, substitute rhetoric for inspiration. We are reminded of the buskined tread and the stately regularity of the French theatre. We see the poet don the "learned sock" of one of our great masters, but listen in vain for an echo of the "wood-notes wild," of another and a greater. We mark the imposing flow of canorous rhythm, the processional pomp of artful versification, the classical refinement of an uniformly elevated diction; but the touch of nature, the sudden thrill of feeling, the simple response of the heart to one that can sway it at will, —these we miss, and missing we deplore. Yet as we write, there occurs to us, as an instance quotable per contra, the touching song of the gentle Moorish minstrel in "Sebastian”—which may be given in as evidence against us:

Perhaps the most vigorous and characteristic portion, as certainly the best known, of this poem, is that descriptive of the French retreat from Russia in 1812 beginning with the stanzas

"Magnificence of ruin! what has time

In all it ever gazed upon of war,

Of the wild rage of storm, or deadly clime,
Seen, with that battle's vengeance to compare?
How glorious shone the invader's pomp afar!
Like pampered lions from the spoil they came;
The land before them silence and despair,

The land behind them massacre and flame;

Blood will have tenfold blood. What are they now? A name.
"Homeward by hundred thousands, column-deep,

Broad square, loose squadron, rolling like the flood
When mighty torrents from their channels leap,
Rushed through the land the haughty multitude,
Billow on endless billow; on through wood,
O'er rugged hill, down sunless marshy vale,
The death-devoted moved, to clangour rude
Of drum and horn, and dissonant clash of mail,
Glancing disastrous light before that sunbeam pale.”

Farewell, my gentle harp, farewell, #ol, y *****

Thy task shall soon be done,

And she who loved thy lonely spell
Shall, like its tones, be gone;
Gone to the bed, where mortal pain
Pursues the weary heart in vain.

I shed no tears, light passes by
The pang that melts in tears,
The stricken bosom that can sigh,
No mortal arrow bears.
When comes the mortal agony,

The lip is hush'd, and calm the eye.

And mine has come, no more I weep,
No longer passion's slave,

My sleep must be th' unwaking sleep,

My bed must be the grave.

Through my wild brain no more shall move

Or hope, or fear, or joy, or love.

It were libellous to say there are no other such examples of the simply pathetic and tenderly natural in the author's volumes of verse, but there are not many such, so far as our judgment and memory will serve.

From his doings in minstrelsy, turn we to his doings in prose fiction. Most people have heard of "Salathiel," but not many have read it. The reputation which it ensured its author was wide, and emphatic, but it was of a hearsay kind. Men pronounced the story of the Jew a work of genius, and Dr. Croly a distinguished writer, but they wisely confined their admiration to the safe platitudes of general terms, and abstained from asking one another, Have you read "Salathiel?" To have solicited their special opinion on the character of Sabat the Ismaelite, or the description of Rome in flames, and the "Christians to the lions!" would speedily and sadly have reduced them to a nonplus. How often does the same principle hold good in the circles of the fashionable reading world! Even the popularity of the most popular, were it carefully analysed, might show such an absence of the elements of intelligence and actual sympathy as would considerably disgust the object of it. The voice of the multitude is not the most trustworthy of guarantees for immortality-too frequently it illustrates the scornful lines of old Horace in the French tragedy:

Sa voix tumultueuse assez souvent fait bruit,

Mais un moment l'élève, un moment le détruit ;
Et ce qu'il contribue à notre renommée

Toujours en moins de riens se dissipe en fumée.*

While, then, we are not prepared to say that "Salathiel" deserved more popularity, we think that it deserved more readers. What a magnificent theme, even though a trite and faded one, that of the Wandering Jew! What scope for a soaring imagination, what background for a glowing fancy, in the story of the mortal immortal, the "everlasting" stranger upon earth, the unresting, undying one! And here meets us a fault in Dr. Croly's romance. Beyond a page or two at the beginning and the end of his fiction, there is positively no connexion between Salathiel and མ་དང་རྩ་ཁོ་མིང་པར་ག་ང་སྟོང་ར་ཁོར་རྡོ་འདོན་པ་ག་ང་རང་ཀྱི་ཐིན་ཡིག་གི་ཆིགས་ཀྱི་གོས་ཆང་འཐོན་གི་གས་ང་་་་་

Corneille: Horace, Acte v. Scène iii. wil wh

the Wandering Jew. The interest does not attach to the latter as such. The plot does not gather around him as such. He is almost uninfluenced, his career is almost unaffected, by the dread sentence, "Tarry thou till I come!" In fact, we should peruse the tale with greater interest were Salathiel not the Wandering Jew-since the supernatural destiny affixed to that traditional being goes far to remove him from the ordinary pale of human sympathies, and transplants him into the shadowy region of creatures unreal and allegorical, Dr. Croly, indeed, claims for him a share of the common repugnances, hopes, and fears of human nature— and makes him shun pain and disease as instinctively and intensely as if he held his life on the frailest tenure, But there is something incongruous and unsatisfactory in all this. Allan Cunningham observes, that we feel with Salathiel for eighty years and odd; and at the close of the usual term of human life, shut our hearts, and commence wondering. The observation almost implies, however, that "honest Allan" either had never read, or else had forgotten all about Salathiel; for Croly confines his three volumes to fewer than "eighty years and odd," concluding them with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans under Titus.

If ever the veritable Wandering Jew turns up, and gives the world his autobiography, or some one graphic section thereof, it will not be much in the vein of "Salathiel." Dr. Croly is too rhetorical by half. His excited orientals in their wildest vagaries are cool enough to sacrifice passion for a period, and not unfrequently prefer pomp to pathos. They have one and all been taught to declaim, and to speak their speeches trippingly on the tongue. If they have something akin to Isaiah and Ezekiel, to Paul and John, they also betray their obligations to Edmund Burke and modern oratory. Another valid objection to "Salathiel," is want of unity. It is almost a thing of shreds and patches-a portfolio of ill-connected sketches. It is a rolling picture of eastern scenery, a cyclorama of moving accidents by flood and field. Many of the details are given with the hand of a master. The reader of "Salathiel" cannot but be struck by descriptions like that of the demoniac by the Dead Sea, the burning of Rome under Nero, the fight of Constantius with the lion, the surprise of the citadel of Massada, the orgies in the pirates' cave, and, above all, the solitary passage of Salathiel in the burning galley, when, plunging and tossing like a living creature in its last agony, the trireme he had boarded burst away from her anchors,--the wind was off the shore-a gust, strong as the blow of a battering ram, struck her,—and, on the back of a huge refluent wave, she shot out to sea, a flying pyramid of fire. The book contains, also, several portraits touched off with considerable talent:-Sabat the Ismaelite, first seen as the crazy beggar, the son of El Hakim, and afterwards as that terrible herald of evil, so vigorously described by Josephus, who, in Jerusalem's hour and power of darkness, wandered up and down her streets, crying "Woe! woe! woe!" Jubal, the impetuous and ill-fated Jewish warrior-Gessius Florus, the infamous Roman procurator, "a little bloated figure, with a countenance that to the casual observer was the model of gross good-nature, a twinkling eye, and a lip on the perpetual laugh"-the Emperor Nero, "a pale, under-sized, light-haired young man, sitting before a table with a lyre on it, a few copies of verses and drawings, and a parrot's cage, to whose inmate he was teaching Greek with great assiduity"-Titus, princely,

engaging, with features "handsome and strongly-marked Italian, and form, though tending to breadth, and rather under the usual stature, yet eminently dignitied." The character of the troublous times to which this fiction belongs, supplies the author with ample opportu nities for getting his hero into strange passes. But the interest is mightily abated when we know how sure he is to get out of them, and the very variety of Salathiel's difficulties becomes at last monotonous and wearisome. He is perpetually being taken prisoner, and perpetually setting himself, or being set, at liberty. The way to catch hin, is, to Roman and Jew, easy enough; but the way to keep him is undreamed of in their penal philosophy. Nero despatches him to execution, and a masked figure hurries him instead to liberty. Near the Lake of Tiberias he is captured by a body of Roman troopers, and gives them the slip by a ruse of Arab horsemanship. After a two years' durance in an unlighted dungeon, he gropes his subterranean way into a brilliantly illuminated cavern of Cypriote pirates. Onias imprisons him in the upper ward of a stupendous tower, and a boy lets him out of the window in an empty wine-basket. Titus has him fast under trusty lock and key, and a young girl, Naomi, guides him to freedom. Again Onias consigns him to captivity in the Tower of Antonia, in a dungeon undermined and fired by the enemy; and the very means used for his inevitable destruction are those which saved his charmed life, for though the walls collapse, and he is plunged down a chasm, and continues rolling for some moments in a whirl of stones, dust, earth, and smoke, yet, when it subsides, he finds himself lying on the greensward, in noonday, at the bottom of a valley, with the Tower of Antonia covered with the legionaries, five hundred feet above him, and, as might be expected, he is up and doing again in no time at all.

The management of historical fiction is at all times a matter of nicety and difficulty. We do not think "Salathiel" a triumph of art in this respect. There is either too much or too little history in it. It is neither one thing nor the other. There is something paradoxical in its very starting-point. Why is Salathiel so infinitely affected by the words Tarry thou till I come," proceeding as they do from the mouth of One in whose divine mission he is not a believer? And then in the evolution of the great drama of Jerusalem's destruction, we have just sufficient adherence to history to make us expect the narration of notorious episodes, inseparably related to the catastrophe, and the introduction of notorious characters, almost essential to the working of the tragedy-in which expectation, however, we find ourselves in error. As a writer of fiction, Dr. Croly was at liberty to use as much and as little of fact as he pleased, always with a due deference to the exigencies of art; and as readers of fiction, we too are at liberty to express our opinion as to the success of his electicism in this respect. And now, having growled ad libitum, let us own, in conclusion, that "Salathiel" is not lacking in features of power and grandeur, in qualities of lofty conception and elaborate fulfilment, such as would do honour to any writer of the age.

The mere fact of its publication in the pages of Blackwood ensured to Dr. Croly's other novel, "Marston," the advantage of a large, if not an eager, public. It failed to excite the interest which some of its "forbears" and successors, as serial fictions in Old Ebony, have so sig