522 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, 



libran : for me that gentleman studies deeply and learnedly to perfect him- 

 self in his admirable art, which is so like to nature, and daily and nightly de- 

 velopes his true genius : the ladies enrapture my senses, thrill me with plea- 

 surable emotions, stir my gentler passions, and send me home to my lobster 

 supper too happy and gratified to eat, and then to bed, to dream over again 

 the scenes in which they had so delighted me. Books are published almost 

 hourly to instruct and please me : they are made cheap to suit my circum- 

 stances ; and comely to lake my eye. For me Wilkie, and Etty, and Calcott, 

 and the Landseers paint ; and Chantrey and Behnes chisel. The ' Morning 

 Chronicle' is printed and published every morning, that I may know what 

 news is stirring abroad and at home : if I am wrong in any political opinion, 

 the editor sets me right : if I am indifferent to party, he rouses me up, and 

 makes me a partizan. In the house Sir Robert Peel pretends to address him- 

 self to the Speaker, but it is to me that bespeaks it is me that he endeavours 

 to convince if he does not always do so, the fault is in me, not in his oratory. 



" So much for town contentments. If I visit the country, Nature, the best 

 florist and horticulturist in the world, places before me every object that can 

 administer delight to my better senses. Rivers run in silvery splendour at 

 my feet: flowers kiss 'the shadow of my shoe-tie;' trees lend me their um- 

 brellas or their parasols, just as it happens to rain or shine : birds troll their 

 songs the oldest national melodies, if not the best : the air is made fragrant 

 with perfumes which no pastiles can imitate : fields, leading to some rural 

 resting-place, invite me to tread their soft, cool carpets, which those of Tur- 

 key cannot rival : banks, rendered pliant and easy as velvet with three-piled 

 moss of the richest green and gold, tempt me to repose in the shade. I agree 

 not with the lamentable poet who said or sung that ' the sun shone not for 

 him :' on the contrary, I assert that that respectable luminary shines empha- 

 tically for me : the stars are equally good ; and the moon lends me ' all her 

 light/ and borrows more monthly when that grows insufficient. 



"These marks of perpetual attention to my wants and wishes, in town and 

 out of town, breed in me (who am easily pleased, and thankful withal) such 

 serious reasons for content, that I envy not the man who can travel from Dan 

 to Beersheba, and still be a grumbler and a malcontent." 



The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Edited by Boz. 

 London. Chapman and Hall, 186, Strand. 



WE have before us seven numbers of a work which has attracted no little 

 notice in the world of wit, and which certainly deserves the serious attention 

 of all laughter- loving mortals. These memoirs contain some account of the 

 adventures of Mr. Pickwick, the founder, and Messrs. Tupman, Winkle, and 

 Snodgrass, three of the members of the club, in search, not of the picturesque, 

 like Dr. Syntax, but of information concerning men and manners, for the in- 

 struction and edification of the members of the society. Of course the story 

 is merely a frame-work in which to exhibit pictorial representations of the 

 incidents which befel these gentlemen in the course of their travels. The 

 comedy is interspersed with some occasional touches of tragedy, which we do 

 not think by any means so felicitous in their execution as the lighter and 

 more humorous parts ; and for poetry, at least poetry of a serious character, 

 we recommend the author of these papers to eschew it for ever. To borrow 

 the words which he has put into the mouth of the supposititious creator of the 

 lines on the " Joy Green," when called upon to recite his offerings to the muse, 

 " It's a very slight affair, and the only excuse I have for having ever perpe- 

 trated it is, that I was a young man at the time." The style of ideas brought 

 into fashion by Monk Lewis, and sustained for a time by the vigorous pen 

 and wild imagination of Barry Cornwall, has long since been forsaken under 

 the influence of returning good taste, and consigned to the " tomb of all the 

 Capulets ;" and young poets should recollect that the uneven lines of Thomas 



