DEAR NORTH,

This is a very wet, gloomy, and uncomfortable day, and I see no likelihood of my being able to stir abroad, therefore I have had a rousing fire made, and, for the first time these three weeks, my pen is in my fingers. You ask me to give you a review of Washington Irving's new book-My dear sir, you may depend upon it, that there is very little to be said upon this book, that can be at all instructive to those who have read it, and compared it with Mr Irving's previous publications. Its character will be at once appreciated: it is one of those productions concerning which there cannot be any diversity of opinion whatever. But your wishes are commands to me, and I shall while away a misty hour, in an endeavour to obey you.

Before I begin, however, allow me to say a word or two on things in general. I have run over the last Numbers of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews with feelings of tedium and disgust, in which I would fain hope every sensible person participates. To say the truth, Christopher, the belleslettres criticism of our day, is waning very rapidly to its total extinction; and unless you turn your attention to these matters with a seriousness and pith beyond even what your pages have hitherto exemplified, I honestly confess I see no chance of the affair outliving another twelvemonth. In the last Jeffrey there are but three articles which have any relation to the elegant literature of the day, and I am concerned to say, that more melancholy specimens than at least two of them could not be discovered in even the most trashy periodicals of our time. Who reviewed Mr John Dunlop's History of Roman Literature I know not -but whoever he is, he is one of the shallowest praters that ever contaminated the fields of classical disquisition by his touch. He proses about the history of the Latin tongue in a style of ignorance which would have been sneered at even a hundred years ago, but VOL. XVI.

which, at this time of day, is really deserving of something more than a mere sneer. He is obviously quite as much in the dark as to all that the great philologers of the last fifty or sixty years have done, as if he had written anno Domini 1724. He is ignorant even of the hackneyed distinction between Goth and Celt, and chatters as absurdly about the ancient population of Europe, as any old Greek could have done at the time when anything westwards or northwards of Greece was barbarous, and unworthy of being at all considered in the eyes of the most self-sufficient race that ever existed on the surface of the earth. This man has never heard of the clear, complete, and satisfactory theory of European language, with which every scholar in Europe has been made familiar, by the labours of Herder, Adelung, and their disciples. His notions of etymology, and the history of speech, are as dark as those of Samuel Johnson-or even of that man of lead TODD. The Latin language is according to him Æolic Greek, much mingled with Oriental, and slightly, with Celtic dialects. Poor man! Celtic dialects! he might as well talk of grafting the oak upon the alder. The Greeks who colonized Italy, were Goths themselves, and they found Gothie tribes in possession of that country-these Gothic tribes had many ages before driven the original Celts beyond the Alps, and, if this man had known anything at all about Greek, or Latin, or Gothic, he would have known that every monument that has descended to us, of the language of the Italian tribes conquered by the Romans, proves that these tribes were Gothic tribes, who had attained different degrees of progress in the work of polishing their Gothic dialectssome of them acting upon the same principles which guided the Greeks in the work of polishing their Gothic dialect, and others upon very nearly the same principles that have conducted the refinement of the Gothic dialects, now in use over the greater part 2 P

of the European world. This man cannot even have read Rose's Letters from the North of Italy.-But really, it is too much to think of exposing such an ignoramus in more than a single sentence. In talking of the formation of the Latin tongue, he says, (p. 391) "The portion derived from the Celtic OR Teutonic, is exceedingly small." He might as well have spoken of the Gaelic on Greek; and indeed, he has committed, precisely and literatim, that very blunder, although how this should be so, he will no more be able to understand, even when he reads my words, than is the King of Ashantee to comprehend the principle of Sir Humphrey Davy's safety-lamp. As for explaining to him how a dialect could be at once Oriental, Gothic, and Greek, I beg to be excused throwing pearls to porkers. It is sufficient to have given all who understand anything about such matters, a glimpse of the awful cimmerianism of the philologer and classical critic of the Edinburgh Review. What I have already said, is indeed more than enough to satisfy every scholar that Mr Jeffrey has been constrained to entrust this department of his work to some worthy, quite upon a level as to knowledge and sense, with the other hero who seems to have assumed the chair as to all questions of English belleslettres and poetry, in the same glorious journal.

I allude, of course, to the egregious idiot, who has of late been suffered to cockneyfy the contemporary criticism of Mr Jeffrey's oracle-the ass who, about this time last year, puffed the leading paragraphs of the Sunday papers-who, in the penult number, communicated to us his pathetic sensations on discovering a kilted Celt (not a Goth OR Teuton, Mr Philologer) with old blue and yellow in one hand, and a stick of brimstone in the other -and who, unus et idem, has now gratified the world by talking of Keats, Shelley, Hunt, and BYRON, as 66 four friends, POETS, and PATRIOTS!" This, assuredly, is the ultimatum. I happen to know that Lord Byron, when Johnny Keats was first mentioned in the Edinburgh Review, wrote a pamphlet in which he, Lord Byron, expressed his opinion (justified by the event) that the Edinburgh Review would never hold up its head, after stooping to the degradation of lauding

such a brainless creature as Johnny. I know that this letter was seen by half Mayfair-and I call upon John Cam Hobhouse, Esq. in particular, to deny that such a pamphlet EXISTED, if he dares.-I also know that Lord Byron was disgusted beyond endurance, when King Leigh came to Italy, and that he cut his majesty very soon, in a paroxysm of loathing. I also know that he had no respect for Shelley, except as a translator. I know all these things, and they can all be proved, and one day, full surely, they will all be proved

And yet Jeffrey, who must know them as well as I, suffers this animal to eat away the little remains of the Edinburgh Review's character, like a very ulcer. He should recollect that he won't have the excuse now, he had such reason to rejoice in on occasion of that glorious roar of laughter that rung forth, when the article " on the periodical press" made itself known to old Momus. He was not in Switzerland this time-and Messrs Thomson and Murray won't share the blame of a betise they have had nothing to do with. At least I would not, if I were in their shoes.

The third of those affairs-that on Spanish poetry—is obviously the production of some very young man, who has got together five or six of the most common books about Spanish literature, and woven an article out of them, wherein nothing either very intelligible or very striking is brought forth. He seems, however, to have a command of language; and some of his verse translations are pretty, though they are far too faithless and ornamented to be of any sort of value in the way he wishes us to suppose. For example, to take the first stanza he prints, he renders

t

the narrow wayThe silence of the secret road,

That leads the soul to virtue and to God!!!"

thing, we shall find it is little better than out of the frying-pan into the fire. This is a horribly dull Quarterly -one of the heaviest Gifford has ever put through his fingers. The Essay about Political Economy is another of Dr Southey's absurd pawings at a matter of which he never can understand one jot. The Review of Paulding's impertinent book-" Old England, by a New Englandman," is the best thing in the Number, and yet no very great matter, considering the rich fund of fun a Quarterly Reviewer ought to have found in it. They are, in general, too bitter when they play the quizzers. Why waste so many words about exposing the obvious fact, that this Paulding never crossed the Atlantic, but merely copied and mangled the trash of guides, tours, and road-books? Why not say a thing like this in three words, and then amuse us with a few prime specimens of the idiot's impudence? But some people are always apt to take the coal-hammer to the bumble-bee. This, however, must not be overlooked, that Mr Gifford has of late had a horrid fright about an American business, and may have pared this article sadly as it went through his fingers. For his fright, vide the awkward-looking note with which the Number concludes.

"In the Article on Faux's Memorable - Days in America,' (Q. R. No. LVIII.) a passage was introduced from that work, reflecting on the reputation of the lady of Mr Law. We have since been fully satisfied that every part of the statement in which she is mentioned is devoid of truth; and we therefore take this opportunity of expressing our regret that a calumny so unfounded should have been unwittingly copied into our pages.

Now we have mentioned this Article, we may add, that in saying, it was not men

tioned by what means Mr Law acquired

his immense property in India,' there was no thought whatever of impeaching his integrity. We know no more of Mr Law, than Faux tells us; and merely meant to say, that nothing was to be found in his work respecting the capacity in which Mr Law acted in India, or the situation which he held."

Now the fact is, that one of this Mr Law's family lately came over to England, for, the express purpose of pulling the nose of the person who reviewed Faux's "Memorable Things" in the Quarterly. He went to Barrow, who said he had not written the article, (as, indeed, any one who knows

anything of style might have seen with half an eye;) he then attacked Gifford, Murray, &c. but without success. It was, however, agreed, that the next Review should contain an eating in of the calumnies about the Laws. That on Mrs Law is, I admit, gulped in a manful enough fashion; but the other leek (the story about Law himself) is, I humbly submit, got down in a most awkward and equivocating fashion indeed by poor Pistol. The " since the affair has been mentioned, we may as well," &c. is a lamentable get-off, considering that " we may as well" means exactly WE MUST; and as for the assertion, that no sneer whatever about Law's history in India had been intended, I shall only say, that if it was not intended, the Quarterly hero must plead guilty of very considerable absurdity in his choice of language.-But let it passGlory be to St David!

The bibliopolic influence which so notoriously sways the course and tenor of this Review, is sufficiently apparent in fifty different by-hits scattered over this Number of it. How long will the public suffer the existence of this odious, this pestiferous humbug, which all these Reviews play off to the excitement of so much nausea in all who really have eyes to see and ears to hear? How long is it to be a matter of dead certainty, that the Quarterly will puff off as first-rate characters all Mr Murray's authors, the Edinburgh all Mr Constable's,-the New Monthly all Mr Colbourn's,-and so forth? Are people determined to be blind? I confess I, for one, rejoice in the extent to which this affair is carried at the present time, for this one sufficient reason, that I think the veil is now so very egregiously, and staringly, and strikingly transparent, that nobody can much longer refuse to see through it. The Edinburgh Review says, that Basil Hall's book on South America is one of the first books of our time,the Quarterly, that it is no great shakes. The Quarterly says, that Basil Hall's book on Loochoo is a grand affair, the Edinburgh sneers at it.Why so?—Mr Murray published the Loochoo-Mr Constable the South America.-There is the whole mystery. The Edinburgh Review scoffs at the Edition of Lady Suffolk's Letters, as a work full of stupidity and ignorance

the Quarterly holds it up as the very model and beau-ideal of editions.

-Why so?-Croker edited, and Murray published it; and this being the case, I could have told six months ago, just as well as I ean now, that its fate was to be lauded in the Duncoloured, and derided and vilipended in the Blue and Yellow. This is really becoming a fine concern.

In the next Number of the Quarterly, there will be, inter alia, a fine puff of Washington Irving's "Tales of a Traveller," because Mr Irving's publisher is Mr Murray, and there will also be a puff of it in the Edinburgh;-first, because Mr Irving is an American, and, secondly, because his book is not of the kind to interfere at all with any of Mr Constable's own publications. But I am really sick of exposing all this nonsensical stuffSo turn we to Mr Washington himself, and see what is to be said of these volumes by a plain impartial man, who has nothing to do either with Murray or Constable, and who thinks neither the better nor the worse of a man for being born in New York.

I have been miserably disappointed in the "Tales of a Traveller." Three years have elapsed since the publication of Bracebridge Hall, and it had been generally given out that the author was travelling about the Continent at a great rate, collecting the materials for a work of greater and more serious importance. Above all, it was known that Mr Irving had gone, for the first time, to Italy and to Germany; and high expectations were avowed as to the treasures he would bring back from these chosen seats of the classical and the romantic, the beautiful and the picturesque. With the exception of a very few detached pieces, such as the description of the Stage-coachman, and the story of the Stout Gentleman, Mr Irving's sketches of English life and manners had certainly made no lasting impression on the public mind. Everybody recognized the pen of a practised writer, the feelings of an honourable and kind-hearted man, and occasional flashes of a gently-pleasing humour in the tournure of a sentence, but, on the whole, they were but insipid diet. There was no reality about his Yorkshire halls, squires, parsons, gipsies, and generals; and his pathos was not only very poor, but very affected; in point of fact, mawkish and unmeaning were the only epithets any

body thought of applying to such matters as his Essay on Windsor Castle, and James I. of Scotland, his " Broken Heart," his Student of Salamanca, &c. &c. These affairs were universally voted Washington Irving's balaam, and the balaam unquestionably bore in Bracebridge Hall a proportion of altogether insufferable preponderance. But all this was kindly put up with. It was said that the author had been too hasty, in his anxiety to keep up the effect he had produced in his Sketch-book; and that, having dressed up all his best English materials in that work, he had, ex necessitate, served up a hash in the successor. But give him time, allow him to think of matters calmly and quietly, open new fields of observation to him, and you shall see once more the pen of Knickerbocker in its pristine glory. This was the general say, and when Germany was mentioned, everybody was certain that the third Sketch-book would not only rival, but far surpass the first.

The more benign the disposition, the worse for Mr Irving now. He has been not only all over Germany, but all over Italy too; and he has produced a book, which, for aught I see, might have been written, not in three years, but in three months, without stirring out of a garret in London, and this not by Mr Irving alone, but by any one of several dozens of ready penmen about town, with whose names, if it were worth while, I could easily enliven your pages. The ghost stories, with which the greater part of the first volume is occupied, are, with one exception, old, and familiar to everybody conversant in that sort of line. The story of the Beheaded Lady, in particular, has not only been told in print ere now, but much better told than it is in Mr Irving's edition. To say the truth, a gentleman like this, who goes about gaping for stories to make up books withal, should be excessively scrupulous indeed, ere he sets to work upon anything he hears. A new story is a thing not to be met with above once or twice in the ten years; and the better a story is, the more are the chances always against its being new to other people, whatever it may be to one's self. Mr Irving, being evidently a man of limited reading, ought to have consulted

some more erudite friend, ere he put most of these things to press. My own dear D'Israeli alone could, I venture to say, have shewn him printed and reprinted editions of three-fourths of them, in one half hour's sederunt over a sea-coal fire in the British Museum. It is becoming daily a more dangerous thing to pillage the Germans, and I strongly advise Mr Irving to be more on his guard the next time.

The matter of these ghost stories of his, however, is not the only, nor even the chief thing, I have to find fault with. They are old stories, and I am sorry to add, they are not improved by their new dress. The tone in which Mr Irving does them up, is quite wrong. A ghost story ought to be a ghost story. Something like seriousness is absolutely necessary, in order to its producing any effect at all upon the mind-and the sort of half-witty vein, the little dancing quirks, &c. &c. with which these are set forth, entirely destroy the whole matter. [I speak of his management of European superstitions, be it noticed, and not at all of the American.] There were some ghost stories in the Album, well worth half a ton of these. The Fox-hunters are crambe recocta, and bad crambe too; for MrIrving no more understands an English fox-hunter, than I do an American judge. The same thing may be said of the whole most hackneyed story of Buckthorne, which is a miserable attempt at an English Wilhelm Meister; and yet one can with difficulty imagine a man of Mr Irving's sense producing this lame thing at all, if he had read recently either that work or the Roman Comique. Buckthorne is really a bad thing-nulla virtute redemptum. A boarding-school miss might have written it.

But the German part of the adventure has turned out exactly nothing, and this will perhaps be the greatest mortification to those who open Mr Irving's new book. Anybody, at least, who had read Knickerbocker, and who knew Deutchland, either the upper or the nether, must have expected a rich repast indeed, of Meinherren and Mynheers. All this expectation is met with a mere cipher. There is nothing German here at all, except that the preface is dated Mentz, and that the author has cribbed from the German books he has been dabbling in, some fables which have not the merit either

The Italy, too, is a sad failurevery sad, indeed. Here is an American, a man of letters, a man of observation, a man of feeling, a man of taste. He goes, with a very considerable literary reputation, as his passport at once and his stimulus, to the most interesting region, perhaps, in the old world, and he brings from it absolutely nothing except a few very hackneyed tales of the Abruzzi Bandits, not a bit better than Mrs Maria Graham's trash, and the narrative of a grand robbery perpetrated on the carriage of Mr Alderman Popkins! The story of the Inn at Terracina is, perhaps, as pure a specimen of Leadenhall-street common-place, as has appeared for some time past. Why a man of education and talent should have ventured to put forth such poor secondhand, second-rate manufactures, at this time of day, it entirely passes my imagination to conceive.-Good Heavens! are we come to this, that men of this rauk cannot even make a robbery terrific, or a love-story tolerable? But, seriously, the use Mr Irving has made of his Italian travels, must sink his character very wofully. It proves him to be devoid not only of all classical recollections, but of all genuine enthusiasm of any kind; and I believe you will go along with me when I say, that without enthusiasm of some sort, not even a humourist can be really successful. If Mr Irving had no eyes for tower, temple, and tree, he should at least have shewn one for peasants and pageants. But there is nothing whatever in his Italian Sketches that might not have been produced very easily by a person (and not a very clever person neither) who had merely read a few books of travels, or talked with a few travellers. Rome, Venice, Florence, Naples-this gentleman has been over them all, crayon in hand, and his Sketch-book is, whereever it is not a blank, a blunder.

Mr Irving, after writing, perhaps after printing one volume, and threefourths of another, seems to have been suddenly struck with a conviction of the worthlessness of the materials that had thus been passing through his hands, and in a happy day, and a happy hour, he determined to fill up the remaining fifty or sixty pages, not with milk-and-water stuff about ghosts