QUARTERLY REVIEW.APRIL - JULY.
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IT may be expected that we should say something of this book, - we shall take the liberty of explaining why we shall say very little. When criticism partakes of the nature of punishment, (as criticism on such a work as this would do,) it should be limited, as other punishments ought to be, to one of three objects - the reformation of the offender - the deterring others from offending - or, the correction of mischief caused by the offence. Now although Lady Morgan's 'Italy' is a series of offences against good morals, good politics, good sense, and good taste, we do not think that her arraignment would conduce to any of the three objects to which we have just limited the propriety of a penal visitation. In the first place, we are convinced that this woman is utterly incorrigible; secondly, we hope that her indelicacy, ignorance, vanity, and malignity, are inimitable, and that, therefore, her example is very little dangerous, - and thirdly, though every page teems with errors of all kinds, from the most disgusting down to the most ludicrous, they are smothered in such Bœotian dulness, that they can do no harm. Extracts could afford no idea of the general and homogenous stupidity which pervades the work; and if our review should happen to give any interest to the subject, we should be liable to the double charge of deceiving our friends and puffing Lady Morgan. We therefore decline 'drawing her frailties from their dread abode.' Buried in the lead of her ponderous quartos, the corruption is inoffensive - any examination would only serve to let the effluvia escape, and in some degree endanger the public health. We, indeed, have been obliged to labour through these tomes, because our duty imposes that task upon us: but we have not heard of any voluntary reader who has been able to contend against the narcotic influence of her prating, prosing, and plagiarism, and get through even the first volume. - This, however, is not the only criterion we can adduce that the work, notwithstanding the obstetric skill of Sir Charles Morgan, (who, we believe, is a manmidwife,) 'dropt all but still-born from the press:' - we have another, less liable to the suspicion of partiality than any opinion of our's; we mean the advertisements of her own publishers: and worthless as the occasion is, we think that the exposure of the system of puffing in a case so flagrant as this, may not be unamusing, or unimportant to the real dignity of criticism. Our readers - who are also, we presume, readers of newspapers - must remember that it is at least a year since 'Lady Morgan's Italy' was formally advertised - we even suspect that the intended publication of the Travels was announced before the journey itself was begun - and that the price of the embryo MS. paid the expenses of the travellers: - And here we must be permitted to say a word on the practice which (although, we fear, not altogether unexampled, and perhaps not degrading to such persons as Lady Morgan and her husband) we must seriously reprobate as injurious to the interests of literature and society. Travellers in this line, like commercial Bagmen, have no object but to sell their wares to the best bidder; and thus, instead of genuine feelings, original views, and all the results of that noble curiosity and that classical enthusiasm, for which English travellers were pre-eminently renowned - we find, when the able comes to be opened, a miserble assortment of damanged and second hand articles - extracts from catalogues, road-books, and local histories, enlivened by observations gleaned from milliners, laquais de place, vetturinos and cicerones, and thrown together with no object by to fill the prescribed number of sheets, and to earn the stipulated number of pounds. If such travellers get into a higher rank of society, it is by playing on the vanity and weakness which may desire their applause or dread their slander: - by the terror of the forthcoming volume, they levy contributions, which pass under the name of hospitality; and they revel at Paris, Petersburgh, or Parma, at feasts, which, like the banquets offered of old to the Pagan demons, are the tribute of imbecility to impudence and imposture. But to return to the advertisements. - After many false alarms and divers appearances of light troops and tirailleurs, wearing in their caps the laurels of the anticipated victory or Lady Morgan, we thought we perceived, at last, the real advance of her columns in the dignified and emphatic advertisement of the 17th January last - 'Preparing for the press, This notice may have appeared yet earlier, but we have thought it sufficient to trace it back to the beginning of the year - and here let us, in justice, venture one episodical remark arising out of the search which we made in the file of the Morning Chronicle. As, after a sea-voyage, all meat is savoury, so after six weeks stupifying over Lady Morgan, we found or fancied the Morning Chronicle strict in its morals, sound in its principles, improved in its geography, and not wholly ignorant of ancient and modern history. Advertisements in the foregoing style continued to be fired off, in the manner of minute guns, till the 11th June (five long months of expectation) when the immediate approach of the great Lady was announced by a whole salvo and a flourish of trumpets.
What can better paint the eagerness of the public, and the laudable anxiety of the bookseller to gratify the universal appetite! The world 'stands tiptoe' for this literary dawn; crowds wait its appearance in breathless expectation, - nay, so alarming its concourse, that the publisher apprehends his shop may be endangered, and, with great prudence, endeavours to divert the crowd to different quarters of the town. The device, though ingeniuos, proved to be unnecessary: for it appears that no great anxiety was evinced for those very early copies - a tardiness which, we own, rather surprizes us, considering the proverbial guillibility of the English nation, and that no one could have known, at that time, how stupid the book was. This work however was too important to the publishers to be abandoned to its own struggles into life; and the principles of the renowned Mr. Puff were too apposite to be neglected on such an occasion. 'The Puff collusive,' says that Patriarch of the art, 'is the newest of any; for it acts in the disguise of determined hostility. It is much used by bold booksellers and enterprising poets: "an indignant correspondent observes, that Belzebub's Cotillon of Prosperpine's Fête Champêtre is one of the most unjustifiable performances he ever read; the severity with which certain characters are handled, is quite shocking," &c. &c. - From this hint the puffer of the Morning Chronicle, spake: - 'Lady Morgan's Italy has now been open to the public for several days, and already we observe that the warm enthusiasm, &c. &c. which animates her pages, has put all the race of intolerant critics into a STATE of FURY - Lady Morgan has kindled their indignation,' - &c. &c. This was a bold stroke - but it failed: - the 'fury' and the 'indignation' excited no corresponding curiosity; and 'Lady Morgan's Italy continued open several days' longer, without any increased desire on the part of the public to avail themselves of it. A new expedient was therefore resorted to, and the literary world was accordingly favoured with the following important notice. '(Advertisement.) LADY MORGAN'S ITALY. - We are requested to state that, in consequence of the very great expenses attending the production of this work, the publishers have no present intention of printing it in any other form than that now on sale, in two volumes quarto, and that consequently, the report which has been propogated to the contrary, is wholly without foundation.' - Morning Chronicle, July. Bad and blundering as the style of this advertisement is, we do not think it was written by Lady Morgan herself - she would hardly have made so direct a confession of the dulness of the sale, and still less could she have alluded to the VERY GREAT EXPENSES attending the work. We indeed have little doubt, that she reddened to the very eye-balls at reading it. What avails it that the penner of the puff represents the sale of the quarto to be only retarded by the public anxiety to possess the octavo! - His officious excuse was only a transparent insult, and the real effect, substantial disgrace. This unlucky failure brought back the parties to the puff collusive: they took, however, the precaution of seasoning rather higher than in the former instance; and, we doubt not, confidently expected that such a paragraph as the following would stimulate the dullest appetite.
'Fixed upon a rock,' this modern Andromeda certainly was, - and, what is more pitiable, no heroic Perseus could be found to take her off. It is not surprizing, therefore, to find the bewildered puffers at their wits' ends, and attempting to administer their adminicula in a coarser shape. It is no longer the simple name of LADY MORGAN which is to draw crowds to all the bookshops in London; it is no longer a unanimous admiration of that great woman, only differing whether she is most excellent in an octavo or a quarto shape; it is no longer the 'enmity of tyrants' and the 'malignant fury of the reptiles she has crushed,' which testify her success - Alas! no - we have now arrived at a plain confession, that the public does not care a straw about her or her book: - an attempt, however, is made to convince them that they are all in the wrong, and a portentous eulogy, extracted from a paper of which we do not happen to have heard before, called the WEEKLY REGISTER, is now appended to the advertisement. Meanness seldom accomplishes its object, and generally involves the necessity of further meannesses - the 'testimonium incerti auctoris' in favour of the great Corinna of the Radicals seems not only to have utterly failed, but to have been the prelude to the most humiliating mendicity - 'public impatience - profound views - gay anecdotes - liberal spirit - characteristic portraits - inspirations of genius' - all are forgotten, or despised; and we are informed, at the end of August, that there had been just published, - 'Italy, by Lady Morgan, in two volumes, 4to. containing nearly 900 closely printed pages, price 3l. 13s. 6d.' 'More last words!' - Just as this sheet was going to the press, we recevied the puff final - the forlorn hope of puffing, in 'a letter from Lady Morgan to her Reviewers.' We shall make but two remarks on it; first, that it is as dull (we had almost said as unintelligible) as the great work itself, and as clumsy as the series of shifts which we have already exposed: and secondly, that we find Lady Morgan adopts the argumentum à crumenâ, of which even we supposed she would be ashamed; - for, says this disinterested philosopher and logical reasoner, 'the price given for my last venture from Italy is the best answer to those who endeavoured to undervalue the cargo.' No doubt Lady Morgan thinks this proof very satisfactory; but what is it to the publisher, who paid for the work before it was written, or to the public, who will not buy it? - Instead of afflicting the public with this interminable 'Letter,' Lady Morgan should, we think, have tried its effect in private on her publishers, who are acting in direct opposition to her delicate feelings. She labours to show that 'reviews of every calibre (as she elegantly phrases it) enfeeble public taste by pretending to guide it;' and, accordingly, she exhibits a very dignified contempt of their 'decisions'; while her publishers (as appears from a bill just sent to us) are anxiously employed in collecting from periodical works of all descriptions, whig, radical, and atheistical, every rag and scrap of fulsome criticism which the zeal of her partizans has for months been dispersing among them. 'By day and night! but this is wonderous strange!' |