Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/279

 NOTES BY THE WAY.

��209

��work " deserves to be read and remembered, not because it is exempt from faults, but because it is unmistakably the production of a poet."

A book which forms " part of the nation's title-deeds to great- M ^ cl ^ e ^ nd ness," Capt. M'Clure's ' Discovery of the North- West Passage,' is noticed on the 8th of November :

" The whole story is to the last degree grand and noble, and it suffers nothing in the hand of its narrator .... If, during the late war, our navy had few opportunities for performing brilliant achievements, we may console ourselves by the reflection that one exploit, at any rate, was performed by British seamen, which neither Nelson nor Colling- wood has excelled."

��' Aurora Leigh ' is the subject of a long article on the 27th of December, and severely criticized, but,

" notwithstanding the defects of the poem, Mrs. Browning has more fully than ever proved that she is a poetess. The fable, the manners, and the diction, are, as it has been said, more than questionable ; but after eliminating the story, the eccentricities of the actors, and a great part of the dialogue, there will remain an abundant store of poetical thought, of musical language, and of deep and true reflection."

On the same date the reviewer of ' Barry Lyndon ' is inclined to place it at the head of Thackeray's books :

" It has an immense advantage over his better-known works in being far shorter for which reason the plot is clearer, simpler, and more connected than it is in ' Vanity Fair,' ' Pendennis,' or ' The Newcomes.' . . . .We do not think that Mr. Thackeray's extraordinary power of description was ever more strongly illustrated than in the sketches which this volume contains of the wild mad Irish life of Dublin and the provinces in the last century .... In some respects it appears to be the most characteristic and best executed of Mr. Thackeray's novels, though it is far less known, and is likely, we think, to be less popular, than the rest."

' N. & Q.' has had only a few references to The Saturday Review. Two of these are of special interest. A well-known bibliographer, using the pseudonym P. W. Trepolpen, inserted a query as to the existence of a pamphlet by James Grant, of The Morning Advertiser, in which he criticized The Saturday, which had severely dealt with him in its columns. He had intended including it in his ' History of the Newspaper Press,' but space would not aUow of this. Trepolpen's query brought him the loan of the pamphlet, and in ' N. & Q.' of July 3rd, 1880, he gives its title :

" The Saturday Review ; its Origin and Progress, its Contribu- tors and Character. With Illustrations of the Mode in which it is Conducted. By James Grant .... Being a Supplement to his ' History of the Newspaper Press,' in Three Volumes, Lond., Darton & Co., 42, Paternoster Row, 1873. 8vo." Title and preface (dated March 18, 1873), pp. 1-iv ; History, 5-84. Price 2s. 6d.

��Mrs.

Browning's 1 Aurora Leigh.'

��Thackeray.

��1905, Dec. 2.

References to

The Saturday

in ' N. & Q.'

Pamphlet by James Grant.

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