who make it their business to discuss men whose fruits were utterly out of proportion to rather than facts and principles, and when we the efforts employed, he has shed human blood estimate how much mere exaggeration is at like water on the face of the globe; and that work in such conspicuous cases as that of an his system of carrying on war-that is, by unemperor, all such stories must be admitted limited sacrifice of soldiers, who are but as with the greatest caution as facts of history. fascines thrown into a ditch to bridge it—has He was certainly a far better husband than his given war under him a character peculiarly mild brother, Alexander-who was more like, sinister and ferocious. Nicholas cannot be in this matter, Homer's 'Aλésavdpos Ocoɛidns, or praised as humane. The word, in its common Alexander of god-like form, than Alexander acceptation, does not belong to his character. the Great of Macedon. Nicholas seemed, if He breathed, he lived, as the incarnate will of possible, thoroughly to enjoy himself on such his country. As some monarchs, though in occasions of relaxation; and we cannot imag-name absolute-as Augustus and the Antoine that a man who exercised at most times nines of old, or the Napoleons of to-day-have such stern self-discipline, can have much represented, and do represent, the incarnation wanted decided dissipation. When he was of the public opinion of their respective countravelling, and on visits during his travels, he tries, so did Nicholas represent the embodied appears to have been as free and easy in his will of a country which has a will as strong as manners as any other gentleman who does not a steam-engine's, but no public opinion at all "wear his heart upon his sleeve for daws to to act as a break. Powerful over all else, he peck at." He is said to have made himself was powerless against this will. He could not very much at home in England; and he told check it--he could only direct its course. He a gentleman, from whom we had it only at may have curbed it for a time-we think he second-hand, that when he was a boy his did, in wisdom; but, like a hard-mouthed mother used to take him out at St. Petersburg, horse, it tired his arm at last, and it ran away an, showing him the direction of England, with him. No wonder that there was a coltell him that there lay a great nation, which he lapse and a crash at the first barrier. Russia must keep well with at all risks. We know rose up and went on, goes on now, but the that he did not follow this advice to the letter, crash cost Nicholas his life. If he had been in but we know also that he broke with England a greater hurry to consummate the destiny of unwillingly; and if we had consented to go Russia, we might have considered him as being halves in the partition of Turkey, he would selfishly ambitious-as clearly so as Napoleon have been but too well pleased. That it I. was after his assuming the purple; as it is, would have been most discreditable to Eng-we cannot think him so. One cause with anland to have made such pact, is generally ad-other-his sense of his responsibilities as ruler mitted-far more to her, indeed, than to Nich- of Russia, and holding the helm of her destinolas; for the aggressive policy southwards was ies, the religious homage paid to himself, the the old tradition of his race, and he spoke in belief in the future world, which increases in the name of growing and expanding Russia. most men with increasing years, the notion of But we hardly saved our honor in the trans- a mission to be fulfilled and a work to be done action as it was, for the Ministry listened-seem to have conspired to force him into smilingly, and the Times wrote leading arti- the career in which his life terminated. That cles on the sickness of Turkey. Let this pass. career, we may be quite sure, was no bed of We only wish to state that he meant no harm roses for him; and as a man he would probato us; for we cannot suppose that the Czar bly have preferred ending his declining days could have ruminated on the distant closing in peace. The blood that he shed in his caup of Russia on England, like the iron prison reer, was shed not so much by his own hand in its last fatal change on the victim of Italian or commands, as by him as the sole legatee of revenge. There is no doubt that we have the will of his forefathers, and the destiny of acted wisely, most wisely, in preferring the al- the state he governed. We must remember liance of France to his, for England and that we are not to judge him as a man, nor France are doing each other good every day even as a king, but as a despotic sovereign—a of their united lives; but still it is not fair position which, in some countries, some man that we should bear his memory any malice, or other must be called upon to fill, and where for it was we and not he who struck the first hardness and severity are forced by necessity blow. He has done nothing to deserve at our even upon the kind and humane, if they hands unseemly caricatures, or tlrat his death would do their work well. Indulgence is deshould have been applauded at an English manded by historians for the memory of Elizatheatre. As far as national feeling is concern- beth, and we are told to think of her, not as a ed, there is no reason why we should not be woman, but as a responsible sovereign—rejust to him. We will now come to the sever-sponsible both to God and man. We must est stain on the character of Nicholas. It is extend even a greater degree of charity to the undoubtedly this-that in aggressive wars, memory of our fallen foe, and judge of him as "Pour être heureux Il faut être deux," a sovereign, responsible indeed to God, but ir-prince to be on bad terms with his subjects, responsible to man, and acting in that most least so to a prince whose dominions are not difficult of all positions according to the clear- larger than the county of Rutland, for then the ness of the light that was in him. The mo- difference assumes the complexion of a quartives of his actions, stupendous in themselves rel in the same household. Yet many of the and consequences, are laid bare elsewhere; petty German princes have notoriously been but the veil has not been raised to us, nor on bad terms with their subjects, in "conseshould we wish it raised. Under strong re-quence of promising constitutions and other strictive circumstances, Nicholas of Russia privileges, and not performing these promises. lived the life of an antique hero, and, we think To what are we to attribute their reluctance we may say, at last died the death of a Chris- to gain popularity at an easy rate, except to tian. At least, if any evidence is to be gotten their dread of the Russian incubus, which, from deathbeds, the evidence of his deathbed whenever their hearts warmed towards their all tended that way. And after death, we are people, and they felt inclined to fraternize told, "at first the face of the corpse was very with them, and play king, lords, and commons much sunk and fallen in; but in the evening in miniature, rose up like an embodied Rethe fine features had become more imposing morse, and warned them back to the gloom than ever, from their repose and regularity." and isolation of despotism, which, whatever it It is well that he died, like Cæsar, with his may be for the ruled, must be in all cases a dignity wrapt about him. We should not most ungenial position for the ruler? The have wished him to die otherwise. His faults, French proverb, like his virtues, were those of a king, and it would have been a shock to the feelings of the world, if, like Napoleon I., in his last days he had undergone unkingly degradations. As to holds good in this case as in all others. the probable influence of his death on the des- Friendship is impossible when one man knows tinies of Europe, on the conduct of the war, on that he is entirely in the power of another. the fate of the world, it is hardly yet possible Marriage, in its true and loyal sense, is nearly to form any well-grounded conjecture. The impossible also; hence the Sultana of Turkey effects of the passing away of a great man are is not considered a wife, and is consistently not immediate. We recollect that this was re- not considered so. Thus a despot on a small marked at the time of the death of the Great scale forfeits happiness for no adequate remuDuke. Until the Russian war broke out, he neration; and what is the sublime in the case was not really missed. Would he have dis- of the Czar, becomes the ridiculous in the case suaded from the Crimean expedition? We of the Gross-herzog or the Elector. No doubt, cannot tell. Would Russia have gone to war many of them will be glad to escape from a with us at all during his lifetime? We cannot false position, and the death of the Czar will tell; probably not. But certain it is that in be a positive relief to them. As for the King the recriminations consequent on the disasters of Prussia, with his great resources and enor of this war, his counsels have been painfully mous standing army, his position is and has missed, and one or two words of his would been most degrading. Should his policy have been paid for by untold treasure. Nor can we yet tell what effect the death of Nicholas will have on the future of Europe. Though Nicholas is dead, his death has scarcely yet been realized by the world. It is natural that Alexander II., should profess his intention to will avail him not, for the wishes of the decontinue his father's policy; but the question ceased are as sacred to family affection as the is, Has the mantle of Nicholas fallen on his wishes of the living. The most plausible moshoulders? There are ten chances to one tive for his vacillation and double-dealing will against it. The military power of Russia is still remain, and it is to be feared that his wish where it was at the death of Nicholas. But to assume it will still prevent his joining the Nicholas was not a consummate general, though Western Powers, we mean, a fear of French he knew how to choose generals, and was a aggrandizement. Not that Europe will ever brave and good soldier himself. What will be missed first by Russia is that name which overawed half Europe, and seemed to realize in a distant capital, through ambassadors and agents, the magnificent presence of the man. To Germany-even to the courts connected by family alliance with him-the removal of the late Czar must be like the removal of a nightmare. It cannot be agreeable to any change from this time, he will get no credit for it, as it will be at once said that he changed because the fear of the Czar was taken away from him. The plea of family affection,—a selfish plea in the mouth of a responsible being be brought to believe in the prominence of this motive in the mind of Frederick, for unless the neutrality can be preserved throughout, the future and contingent danger will be realized immediately, and the first effect of Prussia turning her back on civilization will be the testing of the strength of Ehrenbreitstein, and a French army under the walls of Mayence, not for the first time in history. We fear that, under present circumstances, the penetrated into Germany only, or penetrated difficulty of Prussia joining the Western Pow- only into Turkey, but her frontier has been ers, unless her people take courage and force advanced all round pretty regularly, as with her king, is increased rather than diminished. the wash of a mighty spring-tide. The most Her court will cling to the neutrality like a alarming part of the business is, that, should limpet to the rock. There is the tide rise higher, there are no natural barOn the other hand, the lesser German riers to stop it. All is plain and level before princes will not be ashamed to own that they it; it has only to sweep on and on. were afraid of the Czar-rather, we suppose, no Switzerland, no Pyrenees or Grampians in of what he would say than of what he could do the way. There is the Hartz, and there are -and they will throw their small dress-swords the Carpathians, but these mountains will be into the same scale with the heavy sabre of but as reefs to be last covered: they will not Austria. Germany will at last feel her dan- present a solid wall to the advancing tide. ger, and rise to fight for her own rights; and There is no hope but in the manhood of Westat the very last, Prussia, partly from shame to ern Europe, and the united and determined draw her sword against the Fatherland, partly resistance of the German and Scandinavian from fear of being left behind, may consent to races, joined, perhaps, with the Magyar, to follow in the wake of Austria, with a hope of their ponderous enemy, the Sclavonie race. It overtaking and finally heading her, which will is as with the Dutch and their daily position, probably not be realized. We can fancy the a life-and-death struggle, national and individineffable disgust with which all patriotic Prus- ual existence depending on damming out the sians must regard the conduct of their king. sea, and keeping the dykes sound. One weak We believe that Austria has been kept back place will do as well as another: the rushing from a hearty adherence to the Western poli- tide will soon make for itself a thoroughfare in cy, more by her own internal difficulties, than that weak place, through which the sea of barby any personal liking for or personal dread baric horse, foot, and artillery, will sweep, deof the late Czar. With a disaffected Hungary, stroying and to destroy. Many a time before a disaffected Italy, a disaffected Bohemia, and has this tide risen, and many a time has it Germany disunited and cowed by Russia, no ebbed. Once it washed as far as Paris; again wonder that she stood aloof. If she moves now it was arrested when Diebitch was stopt at in the right direction, she has a fairer opportu- Adrianople, and it rose higher then than ever nity than ever of taking the lead of Germany; before. Its ebbings, which were probably only and the house of Hapsburg may be itself re- in the course of nature, were attributed to the stored, even in these latter days, to a position moderation of Nicholas, who, like the fabled which may remind the world of ancient glo- Poseidon, might well have been called the ries. Certainly, she will be guilty of a piece of Earth-shaker;" and he seemed to have the "magnificent ingratitude towards Russia; power of storm and calm in his hands over but the gratitude due to the preserver is surely this mighty sea. His removal from the scene cancelled when the preserver becomes the will soon show the extent of his personal influinvader. And Austria has been invaded by ence. It is quite certain that Europe now the mouths of the Danube. If Germany joins lies open, to a great extent, to this Sclavonian against Russia, as we hope and eventually be- inundation; we may hope that the death of lieve she will, Poland will be restored to some kind of nationality-as far, no doubt, as is really practicable. Hungary will also be restored, and more easily, for the young Emperor of Austria, who has not personally offended the Hungarians, has nothing to do but to restore to them their ancient rights, and become King of Hungary to them instead of Emperor of Austria, to secure their affections, and give its pristine strength to that right arm which, as against Russia, is now paralyzed. Hungary and Poland are the two great outworks, the detached forts, which ought to protect the enceinte continuée of Germany from the approaches of Russia. It is most pitiable that Russia has already got such hold upon them that she will be hard to drive out. We wonder if the Germans ever study the map of EuProbably they have never seen the map in Mr. Urquhart's book. A glance at that map would alarm them. Russia has not rope. 66 Nicholas will prove that change of the moon Our World; or, The Democrat's Rule. By This is an American novel, levelled against broadly and very strongly; and will no doubt Slavery and Democracy. It puts its points very meet with the ready sale which this kind of treatment of such subjects rarely fails to obtain. Examiner. From the Westminster Review. 1. The Poetical Works of John Dryden. Ed- and Kneller. It embodies new forms and qualities of our language. It is full of instruction as the costume of the current imagination and philosophy of half a century. It is a link in the continuity of ages necessary to the completeness of the chain which unites Chaucer with 2. Selections from the Poetry of Dryden, in- Wordsworth and Tennyson. If wanting in the cluding his Plays and Translations. Lon-higher qualities of earnest thought and passion, Parker & Son. 1854. don: J. W. Parker & Son. 1852. WHEN Pope, comparing the enduring honors of a few Greek and Roman writers with the precarious tenure of modern literary fame, predicted that ture or "Such as Chaucer is will Dryden be," if infinitely less profound in its essence, and infinitely less harmonious in its forms than our elder literature, it is yet pregnant with good sense and keen observation, and clad in an idiomatic purity of diction which we ourselves shall do well to emulate. Compared with its predecessor, indeed, it is a St. Martin's summer. Its brightness is not that of a July noon; its mornhe uttered a prophecy which has been nearly ings and evenings do not succeed or usher in a fulfilled. In virtue of his " Alexander's Feast," warm and star-lit twilight. Its foliage is imhis "Character of a Good Parson," his " Mac-browned by the approach of winter; the fresh Flecknoe," a few sketches in his "Absalom and lusty vigor of the spring has passed away. and Achitophel," and a few pregnant coup- Yet conceding so much, and admitting also lets which have passed into proverbs, Dryden that the present century has widened the domay be said to have a name to live. But by main, and in some degree renewed the sumfar the larger portion of his works both poeti- mer noon of poetry that Byron, Scott, cal and critical-writings which at the time Wordsworth, Keats, Shelly, and Tennyson, and long afterwards were studied equally by have explored regions of imagination unknown scholars and men of the world, and regarded to Dryden and Pope- there yet remains for as among the fairest monuments of our litera- the age which opens with the Restoration the is now forgotten. How many educated intrinsic and imperishable praise of having men in our day have read the “ Hind and the clothed masculine good sense in strong idioPanther?" What manager of a theatre would matic and often harmonious diction. They be reckless enough to revive" Don Sebastian," excelled as much in the rhetoric of verse as "All for Love?" Our "Poetical Selec- their predecessors had excelled in dramatic tions" no longer include the "Annus Mirabi- poetry, or their successors in lyrical and delis," or the "Stanzas to the Lord Protector:" scriptive. Literature, like the history of man, and the critical prefaces of Dryden are as sel- is made up of continuous generations; each dom cited as the writings of Alexander Ross. possessing, where it is really alive, its separate The tide of fashion has nearly ebbed away from characteristics, each performing its appointed the literature of the Restoration. Dryden and work. We should reluctantly behold any one Cowley, and Dorset and Buckhurst, are scarce- of these links dropping from the chain. We ly better known than the Dionysiaca of Non- would no more forego the literature of Queen nus, or the Post-homerica of Quintus Calaber. Anne's reign, than we would have stricken They have paid the penalty of embodying the from the register of our kings the comparatastes of a few brief generations, instead of re- tively feeble periods of the third of our Henflecting the permanent forms of beauty and ries, or the first and second of our Georges. truth, and are obscured by the age which at If we can no longer walk in their ways, or one time they partially eclipsed. Time has sympathize cordially in their feelings, we confirmed the titles of our elder quaternion would at least occasionally revert to them as of bards Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, exponents of a past which had its significance and Milton to their thrones, and has in- and bore fruit in its season. We may learn scribed younger names in the golden book of much from the verse of Dryden, and from the our literature. But it has dimmed even the prose of Bolingbroke; we may employ their fine gold of Dryden, because of its accompany- works profitably as an antidote to the exotic ing alloy, and has expunged from its register vulgarisms that infect our diction, and the many feebler inscriptions, which were at one sickly sentimentalities which of late years we period believed to be indelibly graven therein. have been importing from our continental Yet, whatever may be the inferiority of the neighbors. It were a wholesome regimen for literature of the Restoration, as compared with more than one popular historian of our time, that of the Elizabethan age, it has sterling and for at least a score of our poets and prosemerits of its own which should rescue it from men, to be prescribed a course of study of the "mere oblivion." It has at once an historical English writers who flourished between the and a literary value. It represents our forc- Restoration and the accession of George I. fathers as faithfully as the portraits of Lely Perhaps a Pythagorean silence of seven years might effect a more radical cure; nevertheless, complete representative of its merits and dewe should gratefully accept the less-powerful fects, than Dryden was of the literature of remedy, and merely insist on a sufficient trial the Restoration. He was formed by the times of the prescription. in which he wrote; but formed on so ample a Deeming that there is so much wholesome scale, that he collected in himself its various stuff in works now almost universally neglected, attributes, reflected them in their fairest colors we hail with sincere pleasure any attempt to and proportions, and, in some measure also, bring them again to notice. We await with stood superior to them. It is wrong to regard no common expectation Mr. Croker's long- Dryden as the immediate successor of the promised edition of Pope; and we are glad to great writers who adorned the reigns of Elizareceive Dryden in a form which, for its conve- beth and the first two Stuart kings. It would nience and its moderate price, may put him be as correct to say, that the Maiden Queen into the hands of many whom a more complete succeeded immediately to the Plantagenets; array of his works would necessarily deter or that the age of Spenser and Shakspeare from purchasing them. We incline to think directly joined that of Gower and Chaucer. that merely cheap literature has done its worst. Next to the great age of English poetry, inThe public begins to weary even of classical deed, Dryden appears as the greatest namewriters inaccurately printed and ignorantly but it is proximus intervallo. The great age edited. It has found out that although it is had declined: there was a marked and a long desirable to have Gibbon and Cowper cheap, interregnum, and during that intercalary peyet that bad texts and worse typography are riod had grown up much that was vicious in dear at any price. The Annotated Edition of taste, rude in form, and affected in scope and the British Poets lies under none of these ob- manner. Dryden did not succeed to Jonson, jections. The editor is a well-read scholar, Shirley, and Fletcher, so much as to Donne, who performs his work conscientiously, and Withers, and Cowley. He was not the Auwith a due sense of its importance. He has gustulus of a decaying empire, so much as the bestowed great pains in the revision of the text, founder of a new dynasty. Compared with and in his critical or historical elucidations; the old empire, he would rank as a secondary and his biographical prefaces are not mere prince: contrasted with the new one, he stands crude compilations from previously-existing a legitimate and powerful monarch. sources, but often contain new and original Dryden, if he is to be estimated fully and materials, and always afford evidence in them- fairly, must be considered under the different selves that where Mr. R. Bell has employed the aspects of a poet, a critic, and a scholar. As labors of his predecessors, he has also win-a poet, his career may be divided into three nowed and sifted them diligently. Nor is it an epochs: 1. When he was a writer of occaordinary merit in this series, that it is by no sional verses, such as his panegyric upon the means restricted to the best known and most Lord Protector, and his Annus Mirabilis. 2. popular of our elder writers; on the contrary, His contributions to the English drama. 3. room has been found for writers like Oldham, When he gathered up all his powers, and was who have hitherto occupied a very subordinate at once the most admirable of narrators in place, or been entirely omitted from such col- verse and the most powerful and pungent of fections. The publication, however, of the modern satirists. And these phases of his best works of John Dryden is in itself a suffi- literary career correspond remarkably with cient cause for thinking highly both of the edi- the phases of his private life. In the first of tor's good sense, and of the proprietors' enter- them he was striving for subsistence and reprising spirit. We avail ourselves of the op-putation: he flattered the great, and solicited portunity afforded by this well-executed edi- patrons. In the second, although the struggle tion of his best poetical works, to cast a brief for fame and bread in some measure contiglance at the literature of which he was, if not nued, yet the poet was in an altogether firmexactly the creator, yet certainly the foremost er and more promising position. He had alwriter, and to attempt, so far as our limits will lied himself with the theatre which, recovering permit, to gauge and define the qualities of an from the dead palsy of Puritanism, had once era of poetry, which a few years ago was un- more become the most popular and remunerduly depreciated by critics generally, and by ating province of literature. In the third of none more than by those who had gained for these epochs, he had won for himself the obthemselves a high reputation as poets or judges servation of all ranks of society. He was vaof poetry. We are of opinion that they laid luable to the Court, since his powers of ratiotheir venue wrong; and that when Mr. Words- cination in verse enabled him to do it singular worth affirmed that Dryden's descriptions of service as a pamphleteer; he was caressed by external nature were merely book-descriptions, the noble and the wealthy, for his panegyrics he mistook altogether the age and the writer. were recorded as patents for posterity, and In reviewing the literary character of an his satire was feared like a brand in the pilage, it is seldom we can meet with a more lory; and he was acknowledged by the whole DLXXIII. LIVING AGE. VOL. IX. 28 |