98 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[JAN. 



whole affair. The conduct and charac- 

 ters of 'the chief agents may be readily 

 measured. The hotter patrons of the 

 Greeks have long since cooled, and the 

 Turks on their side, since they could not 

 maintain their own authority, have lost 

 most of their admirers. More than one 

 writer is engaged in the task, and those, 

 too, personally acquainted with the 

 scene Mr. Keightly is not ; but he is 

 beforehand with his' volume. Whether 

 he will keep possession of the field the 

 merits of his competitors will determine. 

 It will not be easy to surpass him in 

 industry, as to the collecting of mate- 

 rials ; rior difficult to class them with 

 more effect. It is true, that though the 

 field of action was small, the forces em- 

 ployed were widely scattered the 

 points of activity numerous and little 

 connected the chiefs independent and 

 transient and at no time was there a 

 commander -in-chief to concentrate the 

 interest ; but, nevertheless, there must 

 be fewer details and more general views, 

 if the historian of the war expects to be 

 read. The attention is distracted me- 

 mory confounded one impression is 

 driven out by another for the want of more 

 skilful linking. At the present rate of 

 march, too, the thing will be intermin- 

 able. The explosion commenced only 

 in March, 1821, and the narrative ad- 

 vances scarcely beyond the capture of 

 Tripolitza in the following October. 

 Too large a portion of the volume is 

 occupied with the story of Ali Pasha, 

 and especially his conquest of the Sou- 

 liotes a very interesting tale, and well 

 told, but what has it to do with the 

 Greek war ? It was not till the very 

 last year of his atrocious reign when 

 the revolt had already begun that Ali 

 allied himself with the Greeks and such 

 were his own embarrassments, that he 

 can scarcely be said to have had any in- 

 fluence on the fortunes of the war. Mr. 

 Keightley's account of the attempt of 

 1770 encouraged by the Russians, and 

 basely abandoned by them is more to 

 the purpose. The condition of the 

 Greek population under the tyranny of 

 the Turks ; the formation, again, of the 

 Hetairia a society instituted among 

 the more cultivated Greeks for the re- 

 covery of independence the story of its 

 leading members the state also of the is- 

 lands engaged in the carrying trade of the 

 Mediterranean through the revolution- 

 ary wars of France these all are pro- 

 perly preparatory matters, and are, in 

 general, well described. The first year 

 of the war was, doubtless, the most 

 active ; and it will probably be found 

 easier to concatenate the events of the 

 succeeding campaigns, to the unques- 

 tionable improvement of the work in 

 point of effect. If the writer desires to 

 be read, he must take a tetter measure 



of his readers' patience their powers 

 of endurance. Classing events, too, is 

 one thing stringing tliein, like beads, 

 another ; the first is history, the other 

 memoir-writing. 



Since the notice, above, of 'Mr. Keight- 

 ley's first volume was written, the se- 

 cond has been published, in which, to 

 the sacrifice of all proportion in the de- 

 tails, he completes his History of the 

 War. Nearly up to the fall of Misso- 

 longhi he prosecutes the subject in the 

 spirit of his first volume, leading the 

 reader a dance round all points of the 

 compass by sea and by land fighting,de- 

 bating, plotting, in eternal alternations 

 and plunging from one topic to ano- 

 ther in contempt of all concatenation. 

 Too many names by half are introduced 

 both of places and persons, but espe- 

 cially of persons. The very subalterns 

 are all enumerated, when, of course, the 

 attention should be fixed upon the lead- 

 ing and influential personages, and the 

 more prominent events. From the fall 

 of Missolonghi compelled plainly by 

 the circumscription of his pages and the 

 commands of his employers every thing 

 is suddenly all huddled together, and 

 wound up with some rambling rhetoric 

 about Mr. Canning and his classics. Yet, 

 generally, the writer's judgment shewn 

 in the selection of authorities, and the 

 estimate he forms on characters and 

 events is sound enough ; but, unlucki- 

 Iv, he began to write before he had 

 digested his materials He had no bird's 

 eye view of the whole, or he would have 

 better discerned the points, and con- 

 nected the events. There would have 

 been something like a stream, and now 

 there is nothing but broken rills and 

 isolated pools. 



Constable' 1 s Miscellany, Vols. 57, 58, and 

 59. These volumes of Constable's Mis- 

 cellany are filled with Bourienne's Me- 

 moirs of Bonaparte the character of 

 which is generally, we believe, estimated 

 as highly to the very fullest as they 

 deserve. A great parade has been made 

 by the author's friends, and especially 

 publishers, who are, by the way, the 

 great misleaders of the literary world 

 about this Bourienne's extraordinary 

 opportunities of information, and with 

 some reason as to certain periods in Na- 

 poleon's earlier career. But it is not 

 sufficiently borne in mind that Bouri- 

 enne never even saw him but twice after 

 his dismissal in 1802. He was employed, 

 it is true, afterwards but that was at 

 Hamburgh, and his very correspon- 

 dence was, of course, wholly with the 

 minister. Yet no difference is obser- 

 vable in Bourienne's tone from the 

 beginning to the end he is as well 

 informed at one period as at another 

 as peremptory as to what could be only 



