1830.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



341 



wit in the world ; for instance a student 

 held up a drawing to him, with, " Here, 

 Sir, I finished it, without using a crumb of 

 bread." " All the worse for your drawing," 

 replied Fuseli ; " buy a two-penny loaf and 

 rub it all out." Fuseli was the hero of 

 Johnson the bookseller's well-visited table 

 for forty years. 



The best sketches in the volume are the 

 lives of Moreland and Blake, especially the 

 latter. Moreland's habits are too revolting 

 for detail ; but the gentle visionary's story 

 is one to draw tears of admiration. Mr. C.'s 

 description of his purity, his contentment, 

 his elevation, his very hallucinations, are 

 the most fixing piece of writing we have 

 read for some time. But there is no mer- 

 riment in the illusions of madness, and 

 Mr. C. is too ready to smile. 



The Country Curate., by the Rev. G. M. 

 GZeia, alias the author of the Subaltern, 



$c. 2 vols. 12mo. 1830 There are few 



men more capable of making the most of a 

 short tale or a single incident, than the 

 writer before us, whether ( author of the 

 Subaltern,' or Rev. G. M. Gleig, liben- 

 tius audit. He has no taste for any thing 

 but sketches, either because he has no pa- 

 tience for details, or no tact for discussing 

 perplexities, or no confidence of powers for 

 making them attractive; and, therefore, 

 wisely shuns the attempt. He observes 

 closely, and what he observes he paints dis- 

 tinctly perhaps too distinctly with too 

 hard an outline. He has the art of giving 

 more intensity to small matters than fairly 

 belongs to them, and thus occasionally raises 

 a sort of factitious interest, which rather 

 excites for the moment, than satisfies on 

 reflection. There is no possibility of blend- 

 ing poverty and sentiment, dirt and deli- 

 cacy, misery and fastidiousness to any use- 

 ful purpose. Mr. G. sighs over fine feel- 

 ings where they are not likely to exist. 



The Country Curate consists of nine or 

 ten sketches, three of which are reprinted 

 from Blackwood's clever and amusing mis- 

 cellany they embrace the Curate's own 

 story, and some extraordinary facts which 

 fall under his own eye during his official 

 ministrations. The Curate's tale is a me- 

 lancholy one an early death, precipitated 

 by the ruin of the fond hopes of felicity with 

 a lovely girl, herself the victim of hope de- 

 ferred, operating upon a consumptive con- 

 stitution. The sketches, also, are all of the 

 graver cast, and tell of misfortunes, the 

 results of oppressions, or indiscretions, or 

 unbridled passions of course, not equally 

 fitted for commanding the feelings of sym- 

 pathy, though with one exception, this is 

 obviously the author's purpose. All of them 

 have an air of life and reality about them , 

 the tale of the Poacher particularly so. His 

 Hut upon the Moor, and the scenery around 

 are described, some will say with the pencil 

 of an artist, and others, not unjustly, with 

 the pen of a surveyor. It is too minute ; 



Miss Mitford would have produced an equal 

 effect with half the words. The poacher's 

 case is no common one, and is, with few 

 exceptions, matter of fact, and it had need 

 be, from the gravity of the tone which the 

 author takes in relating it. He is not 

 prompted to poaching by idleness, but driven 

 by necessity to feed his family ; he is no 

 dealer in game ; he shoots and snares upon 

 principle hares and partridges have no de- 

 finable owners, and he seizes them, as the 

 fox does, because he wants them. The old 

 man had been expelled from a small farm 

 rented by his ancestors for a century or more, 

 and subsequent sickness and distress com- 

 pelled him to apply for parochial relief. This 

 was harshly refused by the skin-flint and 

 unsympathizing farmers ; and returning, in 

 a state of excitement, to his desolate hut, he 

 found hares feeding upon his cabbages 

 why should he not feed upon them ? He 

 followed the natural dictate of necessity 

 and further necessity forced him to persevere ; 

 and yet, while these facts are dropping from 

 the author's pen, he oddly ascribes the old 

 man's poaching pursuits to an innate pro- 

 pensity a thing of principle. The old 

 man was ready to work ; but work was not 

 always to be had, while his children were 

 always to be fed. His poaching became 

 frequent, and work became scarcer ; and 

 thus the habit was confirmed. The curate 

 expostulates in vain : the old man had 

 reasoned himself no difficult matter, per- 

 haps into the rectitude of the act. In all 

 other respects he was proverbially honest, 

 and the worthy curate, in spite of prevailing 

 prejudices, gave him what employ he could. 

 Unluckily the son shared in the odium of 

 his father, and took, of necessity, to the 

 same courses, which quickly terminated 

 fatally. The youth was shot in a struggle 

 with gamekeepers an event which plunged 

 the old man into stupor, and accelerated his 

 death. 



The tale itself is not, it will be seen, 

 very attractive, but the tone of earnestness 

 with which it is told, fixes irresistibly the 

 reader's attention. The writer expresses his 

 indignation at the system of grasping eco- 

 nomy, which threw the small farms into 

 great ones. To this cause, he assigns, 

 justly, much of the misery existing among 

 the agricultural labourers ; but with this he 

 couples another our mischievous poor laws. 

 This, we take it, is a species of cant, picked 

 up from the fashionable economists, but 

 which will surely soon vanish. That the 

 poor laws are, in numerous instances, inju- 

 diciously administered, no man can doubt ; 

 but that the principle is bad that they 

 create their own objects, is, we verily be- 

 lieve, a mere phrase, apparently smart, and 

 adapted and remembered chiefly for that 

 reason. Can the author see no causes for 

 misery among the poor but idleness, and a 

 disposition to lean upon the poor rates ? 

 Does he not mark how the rates have grown 

 with the taxes ? Does he not mark the effect 



