ART. XXXII.—The Book of Gems, for 1837; British Poets and British Artists. Edited by S. C. HALL. London: Saunders and Otley. THE Annuals for 1837 really outstrip in point of number and splendour, all that have gone before them. Expense is set at defiance, that the public may be tempted and gratified. Look at "The Book of Gems!" Was there ever a volume that could be more appropriately named, if the mere mechanical departments are to be regarded? But this is not the most favourable feature of the work, for it is full of "Gems" of poetry; nor will this for a moment, be doubted, when it is understood that these Gems have been searched for, by a competent judge, from the richest treasures of the British Muse. When we say that Addison, Burns, Cowper, and the standard poets of the empire have been ransacked for the finest morsels they have ever composed, and that equally exquisite engravings illustrate their verses, amounting to no less than fifty-three pictures by the first of modern artists in this country, little more can be required at our hands in way of commendation. The brilliant clearness which these specimens of art display, together with the superlative beauty and value of the poetry to which they are wedded, cannot fail of securing a permanent popularity for "The Book of Gems." It is as sure to enrich many a library as it is to be the surpassing "Gem" on hundreds of drawing-room tables. It would be unjust to pass over unnoticed, even in this short account, the part which the Editor has performed in the work. The spirit and the judgment of his critical observations, as well as his taste in the business of selection, are of a superior order. He has indeed constructed a suitable frame-work for these imperishable Gems.

ART. XXXIII.-The Laird of Logan; or, Wit of the West; being a Collection of Anecdotes, Jests, and Comic Tales. Second Series. By the Contributors to the First Series, and several new Hands. Glasgow: Robertson. London: Longman and Co. 1836.

THIS Volume is scarcely equal to the first series; or, it may be. because the Laird figures less frequently in it than in the former, that we have regarded it with less partiality-the very appearance of his name to a professed jest, awakening the visible faculties, even before touched by the coming flash. The two collections, however, taken together, contain a rich treasure of laughable matter, in which the genius and mannerism of the good people of the West are strongly infused; and according to this view the publication possesses a value distinct from its main purpose. We ourselves are well acquainted with Ayrshire, and the adjacent counties, and may be allowed to be competent to give judgment on the subject. We quote an example of the contents of the present series.

In

"Courtesies of the Table.-Among the main choice spirits who figured in the convivial circles of Ayrshire about the close of the last century, no one, perhaps, was a greater favourite than Mr. H— of Sperson and manners he was quite the beau ideal of an accomplished. tableman. Along with a fund of good humour he had a superabundance of pleasantry, which rendered his company particularly attractive; while his countenance bore ample testimony to his social propensities; for as it was truly remarked, a wider mouth for a laugh, or a redder nose for a bottle, was not to be found among all the votaries of Bacchus.' Being one day with the Laird of Logan, Mr. H- happened to help himself to VOL. I. (1837). No. I.

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a little brandy after his fish-a custom which is still kept up at some of the hospitable boards of that very hospitable county. When holding up the glass between him and the light- Laird,' said he, addressing Logan, this is rather pale for me, I would rather prefer some of your dark brandy.' 'I assure you, Mr. H—, what I have sent you is the dark brandy.' 'I'll no contradict you, Laird, in your ain house; but it looks pale to me.' I'll no contradict you, Mr. H, out of your ain house; but you should consider that your red nose, and muckle mouth would gar ony man's brandy look pale!'

ART. XXXIV.—The Right of Primogeniture Examined. In a Letter to a Friend: occasioned by a Debate in the House of Commons, April 12, 1836. By a YOUNGER BROTHER. London: Ridgway. 1836.

THE writer of this pamphlet announces himself to be the same as the author of "The Rationale of Political Representation," a work of unusual merit in respect of the perspicuity with which many fundamental doctrines of national policy are explained and enforced, and of the grave dignity with which not a few bold reforms are recommended, both to the electors and the elected of our legislators. We confess, however, that we have not met with the same clearness and cogency of reasoning in the publication now before us, that the writer formerly displayed. There is, especially in the latter part of the pamphlet, a great deal of abstract reasoning, which, whether correct or not, does not appear to us to throw much light upon a subject, the whole importance of which must come to a practical shape.

The title of the work, as all our readers who take a deep interest in such discussions, will recollect, bears an immediate reference to Mr. Ewart's motion for leave to bring in a bill to abolish the right of Primogeniture in the case of unentailed freehold property, of such persons as happen to die intestate. Now, we are of opinion, in the first place, that a new law to this effect, is by no means one of the most pressing importance, in the midst of the many reforms that are required, even admitting that all the good attached by the author to its passing should be realized. Every man has it in his power to do all that is here demanded of the legislature to do for his heirs, if he chooses; and the presumption is, that it is his will that the ordinary course of the law should have its free scope and issue if he does not direct it. But in the second place, it cannot be disguised, if even this slender-supposed improvement in the laws of succession were carried, that it would necessarily prepare the way for the more sweeping measure of annulling entirely the rights of primogeniture as at present, and for many centuries established throughout the British empire. To what the mooted questions regarding a hereditary. aristocracy, may, in the course of time lead, it is not for us to predict; but we feel, that until the nation has made up its mind to some organic change in respect of this order, the law of primogeniture must exist much in the same state that we now find it. We therefore do not perceive the immediate propriety of the present discussion, although in so far as the pamphlet before us is concerned, it must be admitted, there are many general principles advanced which are sound and at the same time temperately defended.

THE

MONTHLY REVIEW.

FEBRUARY, 1837.

ART. I.-Introduction to the Literature of Europe, in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries. By HENRY HALLAM, F.R.S.A. Corresponding Member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in the French Institute. Vol. I. London: Murray. 1837.

A history of European literature, from the time of its revival after the long night of darkness of the middle ages, we have often thought would be a work that ought to be accomplished, although we are also of the mind, that instead of one historian, it would require a whole college of professors to complete it. To write a history of English literature only for the last three centuries, every one must instantly perceive, would be a task not more interesting to him who desires to study the progress of civilization and knowledge, than difficult to peform and to do it justice. A sufficient testimony that it would require extraordinary talents and accomplishments to execute such a work, may be found in the fact that it has never been attempted. We have Warton's History of Poetry; but whilst it is a very defective and faulty production in so far as it goes, it leaves us about the accession of Elizabeth. France has no work in reference to her own territory of this extended nature; and with the exception of Italy, which has found in Tiraboschi an adequate writer of the kind alluded to, there is no country in Europe, to which belongs a national history so comprehensive as to leave uncommemorated no part of its literary labour; and even the work by Tiraboschi descends only to the close of the seventeenth century, and deals more in biography than criticism. The truth is, as Mr. Hallam elegantly states, that the press is ever so active, that no year passes without accessions to our knowledge, even historically considered, upon some of the multifarious subjects discussed in the present volume, and that an author who would wait till all requisite materials are accumulated to his hands, would but watch the stream that will run on for ever.

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There have been to be sure a number and a variety of biographical dictionaries, which embrace much that partakes of the character of such an enlarged work as we now speak of; but when we regard the subject under the comprehensive idea of a universal account of literature, taking the word in its widest sense, that is, a history of everything published in books, there is a mighty blank, which we despair of seeing filled up according to the minuteness and accuracy which the imagination can contemplate.

Perhaps there is not, however, at the present time a literary labourer more competent than the author of the work, the first volume of which is now before us, to the task which he has undertaken. It is clear, at any rate, that he has here already gone a considerable way in that synoptical view which he professes to have attempted to give; for it possesses this character rather than that of a book of reference on particular topics. He has had recourse to all the best existing authorities who have in the course of the last two or three centuries contributed in any department to the subject handled, and in an especial manner has supplied a continuous outline of the spirit and merits of English literature, which has hitherto been in a great measure neglected and overlooked by continental scholars. His appreciation of the numerous and diversified writers whom he passes in review, appears to us to indicate a vast extent of reading, and for the most part great justice and discrimination in point of criticism. It would be too much to expect that even Mr. Hallam should succeed in tracing the progress of the literature of Europe in the fifteenth and two succeeding centuries according to the method suggested by Lord Bacon, who states that a history of letters should detail the origin and antiquities of every science, the methods by which it has been taught, the sects and controversies it has occasioned, the colleges and academies in which it has been cultivated, its relation to civil government and common society, the physical or temporory causes which have influenced its condition, as well as the lives of famous authors, and the books they have produced. But, at least the work deserves the modest title of Introduction to such an unlimited theme, and presents, so far as we have yet read, a luminous and highly interesting view of the mind of Europe since the revival of literature subsequent to the reign of intellectual darkness and social oppression during the middle ages.

The volume before us begins with the literature of Europe in 1400, and comes down to 1550. There is also a preliminary chapter, which contains a retrospect of learning in the middle ages, embodying a great portion of what the author delivered on the same topic in his well-known history of those times; a retrospect which is necessary to a proper understanding of its subsequent progress and value. Every one knows that the establishment of the barba

rian nations on the ruins of the Roman empire in the West, was accompanied or followed by an almost universal loss of that learning which had been accumulated in the Latin and Greek languages, and which goes by the distinctive name of classical; a revolution long prepared by the decline of taste and knowledge, for several preceding ages, but accelerated by public calamities in the fifth century. The downfall of learning and eloquence, after the death of Boethius in 524, was inconceivably rapid, who was the last of the classic writers, and who is best known from his "Consolation of Phylosophy," a work written in prison. About the same period, compilations superseded the use of the great ancient writers, and that enclyclopedic method, as Mr. Hallam calls it, which, as has been observed, is an usual concomitant of declining literature. It is really a remarkable circumstance, that with the loss of the classic languages, there should have been for several centuries an almost total stagnation of talent as exhibited in the dialects that were derived from corrupted Latin, as in the case of the French, Spanish, and Italian languages. Is it not strange, that in these and other native languages, that there was almost nothing to testify that original genius existed throughout the whole of Europe, even in the province of imagination? Are we to suppose that fancy and feeling were extinct, and that poetry, which very frequently constitutes the character of the speech of savage nations, was banished from among men? Yet it is here that the most remarkable deficiency is to be found; and the causes assigned by the author for such a state of things are extremely interesting, and worthy of the attention of those who inquire what extent of influence the refinement and purity of language has upon the intellectual and moral condition of mankind. Mr. Hallam says, that "the very imperfect state of language, as an instrument of refined thought, in the transition of Latin to the French, Castilian, and Italian tongues, seems the best means of accounting, in any satisfactory manner, for the stagnation of the poetical faculties. The delicacy which distinguishes in words the shades of sentiment, the grace that brings them to the soul of the reader with the charm of novelty united to clearness, could not be attainable in a colloquial jargon, the offspring of ignorance, and indeterminate possibly in its form, which those who possessed any superiority of education would endeavour to avoid."

At the commencement of the twelfth century a new division in the literary history of Europe occurs, when the natural powers of the mind began to be developed; and the most important circumstances in the progress of this amendment are marked by the author as consisting, first, of the institution of universities, and the methods pursued in them: second, the cultivation of the modern languages, followed by the multiplication of books, and the extension of the art of writing: third, the investigation of the Roman law: