FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114  
115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   >>   >|  
n, a _work_. We are reminded of one stage in the history of the nebular hypothesis, when Sir W. Herschel, seeing a central mass in the midst of a round burr of light, was almost driven to the conclusion that it was _something immensely greater than what we call a star_--a kind of monster sun. So with the prodigious birth men call 'Festus.' Our gifted young friend Yendys is more likely than any, if he live and avoid certain tendencies to diffusion and over-subtlety, to write a solid and undying POEM. "It were easy to extend the induction to our lady authors, and to show that Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Browning, and Joanna Baillie, Mrs. Shelley, &c., have abounded rather in effusions or efforts, or tentative experiments, than in calm, complete, and perennial works." The critic appears never to have heard of our Bryant, Dana, Halleck, Poe, Longfellow, or Maria Brooks, any one of whom is certainly superior to some of the poets mentioned in the above paragraph; and his doctrine that a great poem must necessarily be a long one--that poetry, like butter and cheese, is to be sold by the pound--does not altogether commend itself to our most favorable judgment. THE REAL ADVENTURES AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF GEORGE BORROW. Generally, we believe, _Lavengro_, though it has sold well everywhere, has not been very much praised. It has been conceded that the author of "the Bible in Spain" must be a Crichton, but his last performance looked overmuch like trifling with the credulity of his readers. We find in Colburn's _New Monthly Magazine_ for April a sort of vindication of Borrow, which embraces some curious particulars of his career, and quote the following passages, which cannot fail to interest his American readers: "We have yet to learn where our author was during the years intervening from the epoch of the dingle to the date of Spanish travel; that he was neither in mind nor body inactive, ample testimony may be adduced, not only in the form of writings made public during that interval, but in the internal evidence afforded by them of laborious research. In a work published at St. Petersburgh in 1835, known but to few, entitled "Targum; or, Metrical Translations from Thirty Languages and Dialects, by George Borrow," we find indications of how those intervening years were spent. He says, in the preface to this work
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114  
115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

intervening

 

Borrow

 

author

 
readers
 
curious
 

Herschel

 
vindication
 

embraces

 

Monthly

 

Magazine


particulars
 

career

 

American

 

interest

 

passages

 
praised
 

conceded

 

Generally

 

Lavengro

 
trifling

overmuch

 
credulity
 

central

 

looked

 

performance

 

Crichton

 

Colburn

 
nebular
 

entitled

 

Targum


Metrical

 

Petersburgh

 

research

 

published

 

Translations

 

Thirty

 

preface

 

Languages

 

Dialects

 

George


indications

 

laborious

 

inactive

 

travel

 

Spanish

 

BORROW

 
dingle
 

testimony

 

interval

 

public