1831.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



97 



officers of Sir David Baird's expedition, 

 with many others, recently, bear testi- 

 mony to Bntce*s correctness on the Red 

 Sea, tend within the sphere of their ob- 

 servation. Into the heart of Abyssinia 

 nobody has penetrated but Pearce, the 

 sailor, and Coffin, a boy in Lord Va- 

 lentia's service. Pearce returned to 

 Cairo in 1818, and wrote an account, 

 drawn up under the auspices of his old 

 patron, and printed in the Transactions 

 of the Literary Society at Bombay. 

 Coffin returned to London only about 

 three years ago, and has been in com- 

 munication with Major Head ; and both 

 Pearce and Coffin confirm many of 

 the more extraordinary circumstances. 

 Others were of a nature not to occur to 

 every body not to say that changes in 

 forty or fifty years may occur there as 

 well as here. 



Major F. B. Head of galloping no- 

 toriety along the Pampas of South Ame- 

 rica has compressed the contents of 

 Bruce's seven quartos within the com- 

 pass of one of Mr. Murray's nice little 

 volumes something stouter than usual 

 and has entered zealously into a de- 

 fence of Bruce's general veracity. The 

 man was manifestly high-spirited, and 

 above the paltry lies attributed to him. 

 Major Head himself is no'stranger to 

 foreign and tropical scenes ; and the bet- 

 ter able to estimate the descriptions of 

 others. He has made a very agreeable 

 narrative, and one fit to be put into any 

 body's hands Bruce himself was not 

 fastidious. Though not very precise 

 ourselves in matters of mere language, 

 we must protest against Major Head's 

 freedoms he is much too familiar he 

 indulges occasionally in the colloquial, 

 till his phrases are sheer slang, and his 

 sentiments the flippancy of a boy. A tra- 

 veller and a soldier is not required to be 

 intimate with literary history, but if he 

 does venture into such quarters, he should 

 make due inquiries before he enters 

 he should reconnoitre at least. John- 

 son, it is very well known, translated Lo- 

 bo the Jesuit's Travels into Abyssinia, 

 very early in life, and in the preface, he 

 commends Lobo, ore rotundo, for his mo- 

 dest and unaffected narrative 'he meets 

 with no Basilisks that destroy with their 

 eyes ; his crocodiles devour their prey 

 without tears, and his cataracts fall from 

 the rocks without deafening the neigh- 

 bouring inhabitants.' These, Major 

 Head tells us, these round rigmarole 

 phrases were rolled against Bruce ; 

 but Bruce's books were not published 

 till after Johnson's death, and Johnson 

 wrote his preface fifty years before, with 

 a very different class of travellers in his 

 eye. 



Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., 

 R.A., by William Hazlitt. This is as 

 MM. New Series VOL. XI. No. 61. 



amusing a volume as anything of the 

 kind since Boswell's, and shews either 

 how much better Northcote can talk 

 than write, or what a capital reporter 

 Hazlitt made it is one of the best 

 things he ever accomplished. The con- 

 versations are between Northcote and 

 Hazlitt, where Northcote plays first 

 fiddle ; and though Hazlitt occasionally 

 puts forward his own sentiments, always 

 worth attending to, he is for the most 

 part either listener or pumper. Of 

 course they are the pith .of the talk, 

 but the mode of reporting gives them 

 an air of literal reality; even when dis- 

 cussions occur, they 'are obviously col- 

 loquial, and not beyond the extempore 

 effusions of intelligent men, of frank 

 habits, and a free tongue. Painting, 

 literature, and character, form the sta- 

 ple ; but there occurs much of another 

 caste the results of a long life in the 

 world the maxims of his personal ex- 

 perience. Northcote takes a tone of 

 superiority, to which his age entitles 

 him ; but every thing he says is stamped 

 sterling by good sense, directness of 

 purpose, and a love of plain-speaking. 

 We had marked some passages by way 

 of specimen of the manner, and as a 

 taste of the quality ; but they will tell 

 better each in its place ; and to the book 

 we refer any reader whose curiosity we 

 may have excited. 



Constable's Miscellany. War of Inde- 

 pendence in Greece. Vol. I. By Thomas 

 Keightley, Esq. Events of nearer in- 

 terest, and affecting larger masses of 

 people, for the last few months, have 

 thrown the Greeks and their affairs com- 

 pletelv into the shade. Scarcely a syl- 

 lable lias been heard about them since 

 Prince Leopold with other prospects in 

 view, perhaps refused a sceptre which 

 the Greeks would never have allowed him 

 to wield, and which the president must 

 desire to retain in his own keeping. Nor 

 will Capo find it difficult, we take it, to 

 deter any future competitor. The Eu- 

 ropean powers are little likely to enforce 

 their orders with their swords they 

 will have occasion for them elsewhere 

 and the Turks have not vigour enough 

 to seize the tempting opportunity pre- 

 sented by the times, for recovering their 

 authority- The struggle for command 

 will thus be confined to the Greeks them- 

 selves. In the meanwhile the War of 

 Independence is over, and any body may 

 write its history. Abundance of mate- 

 rials is afloat in the writings of English, 

 French, and Greeks, and sonje common 

 sense is all that is wanted to balance 

 opposing biases and conflicting state- 

 ments. Information is yet attainable 

 from living sources, and many obstacles 

 are now removed, which some time ago 

 stood in the wav of a fair estimate of the 



O 



