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come occasionally boastful: one evening, at the Museum Club, on his return from Paris, he was making somewhat free with the name of Lamartine, then in the heyday of his popularity, on account of the prominent part he had played in the recent French Revolution. According to Mr. Smith, the distinguished French statesman never did anything without his advice and assistance. He wound up a long and boastful eulogium on Lamartine's regard for him, by saying, “In short, we always row in the same boat." Jerrold, who had been quietly listening to his brother author's rhodomontade, exclaimed, “That's very likely; you may row in the same boat, sure enough, but with very different sort of sculls." The sarcastic wit accompanied this retort with a good tempered, but highly significant tap on his head.

We chiefly mention Mr. Bennett as an instance of the evil cheap journals do to young men of that vague restlessness of mind, so often mistaken for a poetic faculty. Easily accessible, they tempt the scribbling shopboy to neglect his day-book or his counter, and instead of adding up pounds of cheese, he writes verses for Howitt's Magazine or the People's Journal. This has been the case with Mr. Bennett, who is, we are told, clerk or assistant to a jeweller or pawnbroker at Greenwich. These facts, although sufficiently amusing, degrades the dignity of authorship, and ought to be discouraged. Literature, however, will always have these animalculæ writers of verse and prose, and we must, therefore, put up with the Bennets, the Archer Gurneys, and others of that class in England, and set them off with a similar race in America.

Mr. Edmund Reade is another very curious animal of the verse spinning genus; he exhibits the peculiar faculty of changing himself into the last author he reads, as some insects become the color of the plant they last fed on; for instance, if he has been studying Wordsworth's "Excursion," he comes out as a pedler, in a complete suit of gray, and somniferizes all by the drowsy humming of his

voice; shortly after he lives upon Croly, and he then becomes Cataline; after a meal on Byron he disgorges "The Records of the Pyramids," "Dying Gladiators," and so on. We recommend the case of this gentleman to all zoologists.

Mr. Archer Gurney is another specimen of that small tribe of versemongers which have the same proportion to poets that monkeys have to men; like that chattering tribe, their gibbering and antics are sometimes diverting, but there is something painful and revolting to our feelings in the absurd resemblance they bear to the superior race. Mr. Gurney has published two volumes, the first, an apish resemblance to "Lalla Rookh," entitled "Love's Legends," and the other a curious drama, called "Charles I;" the latter is, perhaps, the funniest specimen of a tragedy on record. While Talfourd's tragedies are pretty, Gurney's are funny; it was suggested by the author of "Orion" that there was a striking resemblance between the hero and the poet, in the fact of both having no head; be this as it may, Mr. Archer Gurney might just as well have been without his head, seeing the little use he has made of it in this curious drama. Two out of three of the scenes end thus, in the very middle. "The scene closes in great confusion-exeunt confusedly." An act is generally brought to its termination in this ingenious manner: a great uproar, the curtain falls amid wild confusion." This terrific confusion and disorder are the only evidences we have of Mr. Archer Gurney's head. We ought to add, as another proof of this young bardling's genius, that at a dissolution of Parliament he rushes about, as a sort of clown, contesting impossible elections; now he suddenly appears as the antagonist of Lord Morpeth, for the West Riding of Yorkshire, but on the day before the election he forgets all about it, and rides home on the outside of the mail; he then throws a sommerset, and comes plump down at Lambeth, where he threatens to annihilate Mr. Hawes, but he don't altogether do that, for on the close of the poll the numbers are somewhat in this fashion-Hawes 6097,

66

Gurney 1. This solitary voter turns out to be Mr. Hawes himself, it being customary for each candidate to vote for his antagonist. Mr. Gurney's last political feat was to accompany his friend, Mr. Ernest Jones, to a Chartist Meeting, where he disturbed the harmony of that rational class of beings by undertaking to prove them all wrong, and consequently engaging to convert them all into loyal and contented citizens. The argument was closed by their ejecting the eloquent tory head over heels through a window into the street, minus his hat and coat; it is rumored that Mr. Fergus O'Connor was seen the next day in a far superior cover to where his brains ought to be, and also in a better surtout. It is shrewdly suspected that he, like the Romans of old, wore his vanquished enemy's armor as "optima spolia."

We forbear trespassing on our reader's patience by giving any specimen of these gentlemen's poetry.

But ere we dismiss this knight errant of politics and poetry let us endeavor to give our readers an idea of the outward man: he has the misfortune to be slightly deformed at the hip, and has a club foot this, however, interferes little with his activity about the middle size, has an open intelligible countenance, light brown hair, blue eyes, and fair complexion: his manners are frank and prepossessing, notwithstanding a more considerable share of selfrespect than is generally apparent in our fellow creatures: he is still very young, not having reached yet his thirtieth year: he is a staunch churchman, and very estimable in his relations of life, &c: unmarried. We ought to name that he is a good German scholar, and has translated very creditably the second part of Goethe's "Faust."

Another minor poet, of some little pretension, is John Westland Marston, the author of several acting plays, such as "The Patricians Daughter," "The Heart and the World," and "Strathmore." The first and last were tolerably successful on the stage, although totally deficient in the higher requisites of the drama.

"The Heart and the World" was unequivocally condemned the first night, notwithstanding the admirable acting of Miss Helen Faucett, who performed the chief part of Florence.

Mr. Marston, the son of a clergyman, was born in 1819, and is descended from a respectable family in Lincolnshire.

In his twenty-first year he came to London, resolved to try his success in the world of letters: after writing for several of the second class magazines he finished his tragedy of "The Patrician's Daughter," and introduced himself to Mr. Dickens, who fortunately became interested in the play. Struck with the novelty of "a coat-and-breeches tragedy," the good tempered novelist recommended Macready to produce it, and after some little hesitation the distinguished actor took himself the chief character, Mordaunt.

This piece having been performed several times in America, renders any lengthed critique unnecessary, we shall therefore content ourselves by stating that it is too deficient in interest ever to be any thing more than endured: the hero is a singular compound of ill manners, ill breeding, ill feeling, and brutality: the morbid action of a wounded conceit is too petty to interest us in the hero, even if otherwise a good and tolerably great man, but when, added to this, he is a narrow souled parvenu, the dignity of tragic action is lost, and the whole interest destroyed. The scope and progress of the piece is too limited, and the want of comprehensiveness in plan, and force in execution, render this one of the least satisfactory of acting plays: besides these grave organic defects, there are continual errors of treatment, fatal to all vitality.

The only dramatic effect is where Mordaunt rejects the hand of Mabel, a piece of absurd, unnecessary and totally unnatural brutality. That scene alone shows that Mr. Marston is only melodramatic, and not dramatic :-for the true poet produces his greatest effects not by outraging the sympathies, but by vindicating them; and no writer who has any knowledge of the human heart will

produce a scenic effect at the suicidal cost of destroying the audience's interest in his hero.

The petty spite of Mordaunt (whom Mr. Marston makes a sort of Byron and Canning together) becomes perfectly ludicrous. Would the commonest Titmarsh in creation, merely to resent the rejection of his offer for a lady of rank's hand, descend to the meanness, by his perseverance of overcoming the haughty father's objection, and then at the very altar, rejecting the lady, to soothe his wounded "l'amour propre." A clever low born demagogue, who adds the somewhat anomalous accomplishment of writing verses, manages to get into Parliament; here he makes an eloquent speech which elevates him into a temporary position of importance. The minister invites him to stay during a parliamentary recess at his country seat, a sort of sop to the mushroom politician patriot, who from the dramatist's account seems to be the victim of conceit and inflated arrogance. Here he becomes enamored of the Earl's daughter, who pretty unmistakeably evidences to the parvanu that she returns his affection. Surely in a man of any mind or heart this would have created a feeling of gratitude and unselfish love. He proposes for the lady's hand, and is very naturally rejected by the father of the lady. The magnanimous gallant vows vengeance, and devotes all his energies to become a very great man, which by the way is no very difficult thing to accomplish in a second rate play an inferior dramatist is always detected by this sort of writing; like a harlequin, he has the faculty of changing a commonplace fellow into a hero, by the mere touch of his pen ;—but this 'hey presto" kind of proceeding is fatal to all dramatic excellence, and proclaims indeed the fact that the author is not, and never will be, a dramatist. Mordaunt having become Premier, renews his offer for the lady's hand, and is accepted. The day of their nuptials is appointed; all are met to celebrate the ceremony, when the bridegroom elect gets up, and makes a speech, ending all by rejecting the

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