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by almost any collection of his works. When a man's fame outruns his performances, it is very difficult to bring the latter up to the former's level. The very vagueness of the admiration excited gives scope for so many possibilities of excellence, that disappointment is always possible, and almost certain. Mr. Palgrave's Memoir is far too reticent and far too over-glozing. It hints, but does not speak out; and so, leaving the tale balf told, injures the interest and worth of a valuable life. Why should we not know fully the marring influence on life, fortune, usefulness, and influence, or not know at all? If Clough was a sceptic, why not say so, and let us reverence his honest endurance of the pain and woe of soul it brought, and of the outward penalties the world inflicted? If he was not, then let us know between what opinions he "halted," that we may judge of his contests of conscience. No appeal to public sympathy should be made in the dark. Tell all or none of the secrets of the aching human soul; but whatever is to be made known, let it be outspoken and true, not half hinted at and mumbled about. If he did ask, in his soul's perplexity, "Is it enough to walk as best we may ?" it can be candidly told now, if the public is to be taken into confidence at all. The "half-says" of biography are unendurable. Mr. Palgrave has gravely erred in writing a Memoir of a life of great interest and worth, full of instructiveness and moral beauty, in such a way as to tarnish it all by an abominable "suspicion" that something has been shirked; and Clough, if we have been informed aright, had no shirkiness about him, and sought neither to plate, veneer, nor surface-polish the pure material of his thoughts. The flaw is not in the marble, but in the sculptor's work. Clough, if we understand him aright, was a man of singularly clear, well-poised intellect, and of kindly, loving, believing heart; but there was a want of co-operative agency in them,-the sentiments were not prevailing on both, -and hence intellect and feeling, like the heroes of the "Iliad,” "stood apart." The will, having no authorized masterhood exerted over it, hung idle. And we think, moreover, that his education, more than his nature, was at fault. Had Arnoldism prevailed in Oxford, a living faith would have quickened every pulse of Clough's frame, and penetrated every faculty of his soul. But Oxford's Puseyism and pusillanimity blighted the noblest sentiments of his youth, and its narrow logic erased the Arnoldic force, fervour, and faith from his spirit. Oxford was soulless, carping, Jesuitical; and a fatal rather than a right Newmanism exerted a twofoldly baleful influence. Clough had never been prepared to stand the controversial batteries of Oxford dialectic. Doubt, in its true sense of double thought, both active but each undetermined, seized upon him; his heart felt after God, but his logic failed to enable him to find out and know His Fatherhood, and he was as a ship in the sea, much tossed. Yet he was a brave, good, honest soul,- -a little soured by disappointment, somewhat petulant and saucy; yet manly, enduring, aiming well. Properly written, his life might have been a light to lighten" many; as it is written here, it does little

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else than make the "darkness visible" which it was intended to hide.

We may here note the chief dates and events of his short day of life.

Arthur H. Clough was born at Liverpool, 1st January, 1819; was educated at Rugby under Arnold, and was regarded by his master as one of his better pupils. He was a student at Baliol, and had a high name for acquirements while there. In 1842 he was chosen to a fellowship in Oriel, which he relinquished in 1848, in which year he issued his "Long Vacation Pastoral," a very good set of hexameter verses, in which a considerable deal of Homeric dash is interspersed, with a large quantity of balderdash, and which is somewhat too Oxonian and freshmanish in its form. In the same year he was in Paris while the Revolution was going on; in 1849 he spent the spring in Italy, and witnessed the siege and defence of Rome. He was Warden of University Hall, London, and Professor of English Literature in London University. In 1852 he went to America, and, after trying to settle there, was recalled to take a clerkship in the Educational Department of the Privy Council. He had begun a revision of Dryden's translation of Plutarch in America (Boston), and in 1856 completed it. He enthusiastically_assisted his wife's cousin-the heart-loved Dorcas of our age, Florence Nightingale in her efforts for the alleviation of the evils of the Crimean war, and lost his health by his assiduous diligence. He visited France, Austria, Greece, Turkey, &c., and, stricken with malaria fever, expired in Florence, 13th November, 1861, and was buried in the cemetery there, under the shadow of its cypresses. Clough's life was not one of performance, but of promise. Many a man unknown to fame, unblest by fortune, unstayed by friendship, and harnessed to the daily task-work of laborious life, has done far more in reality and in aim under discouragements to which Clough's were nought; and for that, therefore, he deserves no special praise. What he does deserve the gratitude of men for is, for being honest to his want of convictions, and for holding to duty when the highest sustainments of duty withdrew from his soul. In this he was great and noble. There was an exquisite manliness in this portion of his nature, that when heaven and God paled to his intellect, he yet laboured and waited, and was human and humane. He was a good, true, holy man, whose life was lightless, yet not delightless.

The poems included in this volume are full of thought, but wanting in beauty of phrase. We do not think Clough was an artist in expression. His use of Saxon, plain, and common terms, his adherence to the diction of Queen Anne's time, and his Chaucerian, Drydenic, and Addisonian lexicon, are remarkable and noteworthy; but they certainly limited his power of reaching the minds of those who have perused Scott, worshipped Byron, and have learned to appreciate Tennyson. Poets must use the language of their time -must cast their emotions in the material which is most plastic for their purpose the words in common use among their contemporaries.

To employ any other speech is to make the result old-fashioned, and while requiring more artistic skill, makes less impression on the mind and feelings than if the words used were those ordinarily spoken. Of course, everybody knows these words, but everybody does not feel them, and the force that slumbers in them. The weakness of Clough's sentiments, and the divorce between his will and intellect, disqualify him in an eminent degree for being an acceptable poet.

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We thoroughly sympathize with the unworldliness of Clough, but we do not sympathize with his editor, who, we think, ought rather to have made his memoir consist only of a bare chronology, than to have made it, as it is in a great measure, a tissue of excuses and apologies. An honest man is disgraced by being apologized for. The apologists of Burns have been the greatest enemies to his fame and usefulness. Clough's Life required no excuse-least of all a faint-hearted and faltering one. His life was much nobler and better than his poetry, which, indeed, we do not much relish. The "Bothie of Tober-Na-Vuolich," as a jeu d'esprit, is clever and laughable, if the hexameter measure and the Homeric verse are known, felt, and familiar. Without that, its parody and shadowthrowing quaintness is lost upon the reader. "Amours de Voyage contain many exquisite bits, but as a whole disappoint. Mari Magno" excites the idea of improvement, and the minor pieces alternately attract and repel. The "Strange Seas of Thought," on which his bark floats, are dark and colourless, and therefore cannot give occasion to many-coloured verse. These are the best stanzas in art, speech, thought, and feeling we have been able to find in the volume, though we have searched it diligently, and with tears -of disenchantment ::

"Put forth thy leaf. thou lofty plane,

East wind and frost are safely gone ;
With zephyr mild, and balmy rain,
The summer comes serenely on.
Earth, air, and sun, and skies combine
To promise all that's kind and fair;
But thou, O human heart of mine,
Be still, contain thyself, and bear.
December days were brief and chill,

The winds of March were wild and drear;
And, nearing and receding still,

Spring never would, we thought, be here.
The leaves that burst, the suns that shine,
Had, not the less, their certain date;
And thou, O human heart of mine,

Be still, refrain thyself, and wait."

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Clough was a fine-minded, keen-thoughted man; a scholar of far more than usual ripeness, more suffused with the old spirit of study than is common. His literary faculty was not well cultured, and his logic overbore his faith; but his life was honest, and his work will not, we believe, lac! its Divine reward.

Biography; its Lessons, and the Advantages of its Systematic Study. An Essay.

"CLEMENT," the author of this Essay, has been a contributor, more or less frequently, to these pages for upwards of seven years, and his papers have won acceptance with our readers. We cannot and do not make it a practice to belaud the productions of those who have contributed to this serial, even when knowing them to be worthy of the sincerest admiration. This work we can truly commend as a very well written, sensible, and notice-worthy tractate on a noble theme. It would, perhaps, do it injustice with our readers were we to neglect to state that it is not a republication from our pages, although an essay on the same subject by another writer had a place in this serial. The man who attentively lays to heart the six lessons the author gives in Biography will do well, and reap the advantage in his after life. The book commends itself, besides its own merits, by its object. Any profit derived from its sale is to be devoted to the relief of the distress in Lancashire. It only costs 3d. To get a good treatise and do a good work at the same time is therefore open to many of our readers, and we hope they will avail themselves of the opportunity.

Correspondence of Leigh Hunt.

Edited by his eldest Son, THORNTON HUNT (born 1810). London: Smith, Elder, and Co. IN a notice of "The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt," we gave expression to our regard for that author, whose many amiable weaknesses could not root out of his friends' minds the numerous better qualities which distinguished him. If a man is known by the life he leads, he is also known by the company he keeps, and this is, to a certain extent, revealed to us by his correspondence. The Autobiography gave us Leigh Hunt's own narration of his life, as looked at in the light of his own memory and consciousness. The Correspondence supplies us with the means of contrasting and comparing that self-portraiture with the impression made upon others. These letters are from the most various minds, and from almost all the distinguished men of the time. A brief and unintruding running commentary by the editor jots down for us the chief incidents of Leigh Hunt's life, from his point of view, and is, if anything, rather unreticent. For want of a better arrangement, Mr. Hunt has adopted Locality as his rule and guide, and hence we have, after Early Letters," "Letters from Surrey Gaol;" ;""Out of Prison-Journey to Italy;" "Letters from Italy;" "The Return Home-Highgate;" "Domestic Troubles," in the first volume; and "Letters from Kensington;" "Letters from Hammersmith," in the second. Letters from so many places and so many sources, by so many men whose names are fame, and letting the public into so many of the literary secrets of some time ago, have a great interest, and a permanent literary value. There is little need of particularizing names in this work. We

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may, however, notice that in addition to the great poets and critics of the early part of this century, and many of the more distinguished gentlemen of the periodical press, there are most attractive readings from Brougham, Jeffrey, Macvey Napier, Macaulay, Ollier, G. L. Craik, Haydon, Sir F. Pollock, Lord John Russell, and others. The best text-book for letter-writing ought surely to be one like this, wherein we have the real correspondence of ladies and gentlemen accustomed to write, accustomed to the amenities of life, accustomed to read, think, and feel. Then there is the attraction of knowing how these men acted in given circumstances, and how they wrote in their several moods of thought and feeling.

To get behind the scenes of any life, gratifies the natural craving curiosity we all have to know if all others think, act, and feel as we; satisfies the spirit which seeks to recognize a brotherhood, not in frailty only, but in aspiration and effort, with those who have gone the last pilgrimage of humanity. This work is just such a one as opens up little landscapes of life to the stranger's view, and makes him confess their beauty. There is a good honest intent in the book, and its charms are as numerous as the contributors. It brings together round one central figure, in pleasing groups, many of the reverenced and good, the famed and the noted. We cannot resist an interest in these people; we cannot but be delighted to learn in what manner they lived and thought, were affected or disaffected towards each other; and always the more we read the deeper becomes our loving regard for our fellow-travellers along the highway to the grave. We consider this book a very appropriate and genial complement and sequel to the graceful Autobiography of one whom we might almost designate the Goldsmith of the nineteenth century.

Rough Diamonds: a Story Book.
Author of "Ragged London," &c.
Son, and Co.

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By JOHN HOLLINGSHEAD,
London: Sampson, Low,

THE author, who is well known as an able contributor to many serials, and to wield a versatile pen, has "in accordance with the general and growing fashion," gathered these six stories of common life from the pages of various periodicals." They are chiefly intended to amuse the reader, but they also aim at revealing in some measure to the higher half of the world how the lower lives. The author belongs to the realistic school, and writes somewhat farcically, yet with good intent and great ability. His "Under Bow Bells," a book of a similar cast, as well as his "Odd Journeys," prove him to be a skilful caterer for the many-tasted multitude of periodicals. The author is acquiring name, fame, pay, and popu larity of late, and we can readily recommend this small, nicely illustrated book as a fine gift-book for young, though not too young, readers,-readers, in fact, who need amusement to induce them to read.

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