Welsh Newspapers

Search 15 million Welsh newspaper articles

Hide Articles List

16 articles on this Page

A GALLERY OF LITERAIIY PORTRAITS.…

News
Cite
Share

A GALLERY OF LITERAIIY PORTRAITS. j A work under this title, by George Gilfillan, has just been published in Edinburgh, and has elicited conside- rable attention.—We copy the following descriptions of some of the most celebrated characters of these and other days. THOMAS CARLYLE. I One who is unacquainted with German authors, reads Carlyle with the utmost amazement he is so utterly different from every other writer his unmeasured sen- tences his irregular density his electric contrasts; his startling asseverations; his endless repetitions the levity in which his most solemn and serious statements seem to swim; the air of mild, yet decisive scorn, with which he tosses about his thoughts, and characters, and the incidents of his story; the unearthy lustre at which he shows his shifting panoramas; his peculiar, and patched up dialect the singular terms and terminations which he uses, the unscrupulous abundance the far and foreign strain of his allusions and associations the recondite profundity of his learning; and those bursts of eloquent mysticism which alternate with yet wilder bursts of uncontrollable mirth and fuliginous irony,—produce an altogetherness' of impression exceedingly startling. But, to one acquainted with German, the mystery is explained. Some, at least, of the peculiarities we have mentioned, arc seen to be those of a whole literature, not of a solitary literatettr and he who laughs at Carlyle must be prepared to extend his derision to the sum and substance of German genius. Still, we doubt, along with Johnson, Foster, and critics of equal name, if any human understanding has a right to form, whether by affectation, or imitation, or translation, a dialect entirely and ostentatiously singular. THOMAS DE QUIN-CEY. Conceive a little, pale-faced, wo-begone, and atten- uated man, with short inddscribables, no coat, check shirt, and neckcloth twisted like a wisp of straw, opening the door of his room in street, advancing towards you with hurried movement, and half-recognising glance saluting you in low and hesitating tones, asking you to be seated; and after he has taken a seat opposite you, but without looking you in the face, beginning to pour into your willing ear, a stream of learning and wisdom as long as you are content to listen, or to lend him the slightest cue. Who is it ? 'Tis De Quincev, the cele- brated opium cater, the friend and interpreter of Coleridge and Wordsworth) the sounder of metaphysic depths, and the dreamer of imaginative dreams, the most singular man alive, the most gifted of scholars, the most scholar- like of men of genius. He has come from his desk, where he has been prosecuting his profound researches, or, peradventure, inditing a popular paper for Tait, or a more elaborate and recondite paper for Blackwood. Your first feeling as he enters, is, Can this be he ? Is this the distinguished scholar ? Is this the impassioned autobiographer ? Is this the man who has rccrmhl such gorgeous visions, seen by him while shut up in the Patmos of a laudanum phial ? PROFESSOR WILRON-. Our sketch, at present, is of a very extraordinary I man the wise, the witty, the warm-hearted, the eloquent Professor of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh University, —John Wilson, to his familiars; Wilson, to his foes Professor Wilson, to his students; Christopher North, to all Europe We know not at what corner of this many-sided man to commence our rapid review. John Wilson is a host, he is a continent in himself. Like Leviathan, he lies floating many a rood.' Whether we view him as the generous, copious, acute, and ardent critic,—as the pathetic and most eloquent lecturer,—as the tender poet,—and popular and powerful tale-writer, —as the fervid politician,—as the kindly m-,Lil;-we have before us one of the most remarkable, and, next to Brougham, the cleverest man of the nineteenth century. It is probable, indeed, that the variety and versatility of Wilson's powers have done him an injury in the estima- tion of many. They can hardly believe that an actor, who can play so many parts, is perfect in all. Because he is, confessedly, one of the most eloquent men, it is doubted if he can be profound; because he is a fine Eoet, he must be a shallow metaphysician;—because he is the editor of Blackwood, he must be an inefficient professor. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. I "Among the great unknown or half-knowns of the day, there are few Jess generally appreciated than the author of 'Gebir,' the Imaginary Conversations,' and the I Examination of Shakspeare." We remember once asking at the keeper of a large public library if he had any of Landor's works ? The reply was, None, except his Travels in Africa.' Has he written any more ?' confounding him, proh paulor with Clappertou's enter- prising body-man. It was in keeping with a story of a person in a commercial town, who, when some wight from Edinburgh was speaking of Coleridge and Shelley, asked eagerly, What firm is that ? I never heard of it before; docs it drive a good business ?' And yet there are not many authors of the age about whom posterity will make more particular inquiries, than about this same recluse, saturnine, and high-minded Savage. His soul is deeply steeped in the proud element of the past. He is not only a man of profound and varied erudition, but he lives and has his being in the olden time. His style is dyed in antiquity; his genius wears upon its wings, like a rich sunset, the hues of all perished ages. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. I He was says some one ofrousseau, a lonely man- his life a long soliloquy.' And the same words may be applied to the sole king of rocky Cumberland,' the lord of Rydal Mount, the Skiddaw, the warlock of Winder- mere, William Wordsworth. He has indeed mingled much with men, but reluctantly and even while amidst them, his spirit has preserved its severe seclusion. He has strode frequently into society, but with an impatient and hasty step. It is this lofty insulation which marks out Wordsworth from the eminent of his era. While they have been tremulously alive to every breath of public praise or blame, and never so much so as when pretending to despise the one and defy the other, he has maintained the tenor of his way, indifferent to both. While his name was the signal for every species of insult -while one review was an incessant battery against his poetical character, and another, powerful on all other topics, returned it only a feeble reply on this-while stupidity itself had learned to laugh and sneer at him- while the very children of the nursery were taught to consider his rhymes as too puerile even for them, he remained unmoved; and leaving poor Coleridge to burst into tears, the majestic brow of Wordsworth only ac- knowledged by a transient frown the existence of his assailants. And now that his name is a household word, and that his works have found their way to the heart of the nation, we believe that he has never once been be- trayed into an expression of undue complacency—that he feels himself precisely the man he was before-that he moves in his elevated sphere as native and endued' unto its element; and that the acclammation as well as the abuse of the public have failed to draw him forth from the sublime solitudes of his own spirit." WILLIAM GODWIN. I We like Falkland least of all, though we tremble at him, as the terrible incarnation of the principle of honour. He is certainly a striking creation but resembles rather one of the fictitious beings of heraldry, than a real man. No such noble nature was ever so soured into a fiend; no such large heart was ever contracted into a scorpion- circle of fire, narrowing around its victim. Godwin's Falkland is in truth a more monstrous improbability than his daughter's Frankenstein. He is described as a paragon of benevolence and virtue, and yet to preserve, not the consciousness of lionoi*, but, as Fuseli remarked, its mere reputation, he sets himself deliberately, by every despicable art, by every enormous energy of in- justice, to blast a being whom, all the while, he respects and admires. And you are expected, throughout the whole career of the injury, to blend admiration of the inflicter, with sympathy for the victim. It is an attempt to reconcile the most glaring and moral contradictions, an attempt worthy of the author of the far-famed chapter on I Necessity,' and an attempt in which, strange to say he nearly succeeds. You never altogether lose your re- gard for Falkland and this chiefly because Caleb Wil- liams himself never does. To his eye, above the blood of Tyrrell, and the gallows of the Hawkins', and his own unparalleled wrongs, the genius of Falkland continues to soar; and his spirit is 'rebuked under it,' as Mark Antonv's was by Ccesar. And how affecting his appa- rition toward the close his head, covered with untimely snow, his frame palsied by contending passions, dying of a broken heart. Caleb, though he be standing at bay, re- lents at the sight of the hell which suppressed feeling has charactered upon his forehead; and Falkland dies at length, forgiven by him, by you, by all. Williams him- self is the creation of circumstances, and has all the pro- minent points in his character struck out by the rude collisions he encounters. Originally he is neither more nor less than a shrewd, inquisitive youth. He Is never much more, indeed, than a foil to the power and interest of his principal. Tyrrell is a brute, nor even an English brute but a brute proper and positive. He is drawn sternly and con amore. The other characters, Miss Mel- ville, Raymond, Collins, cSre. are very insipid, with the exception of Gines, the bloodhound, who is painted with the force, gusto, and almost inhuman sympathy of a Landseer and the hag who attempts the life of Caleb in the robber's den, a dire figure, painted into powerful re- lief by her butcher's cleaver, a coarser Clytemncstra, if great things may be likened to small. Such is Caleb Williams,' a work which made an era in the fictitious writing of the age, and which has not only created a school of imitators, but coloured insensibly many works, which profess and possess independent claims such as the Paul Cliffords, Eugene Arams, Rookwoods, and Oli- ver Twists, of Bulwer, Ainsworth, and Boz, which, but for it, we verily believe, had never been."

[No title]

THE THREATENED FAMINE IN IRELAND.…

[No title]

THE HON. F. H. BERKELEY, M.P.,…

[No title]

THE IRON TRADE IN AMERICA.j

-'w'I THE LATE REVERSE IN…

[No title]

MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE.

[No title]

WEEKLY CALENDAR. I

HIGH WATER AT THE FOLLOWING…

LONDOIN GAZETTE.

I AGRICULTURE, MARKETS, &c.

Advertising