Charity Pecksniffe, Mr. Toots, Mr Smallweed, occur as examples. We must confess that humour of this kind soon palls on us, and it cannot we think without bad taste be applied to characters that are brought much before the reader's eye. Mr Thackeray chiefly uses what we have called the allusive method; but with this peculiarity, that he is careful so to disguise each name that to a hasty reader it appears totally devoid of significance. The veil is sometimes thin and transparent, as when a raffish man about town is named Captain Blackball, and a determined hazard player the Honble Mr Deuceace; but more commonly the disguise is so complete as to baffle the penetration of any but a determined investigator. Perhaps it is not every one who has detected the poisonous influence of Mr. Wenham, the great critic and jackal of Lord Steyne, the frailty of Madame de la Cruche Cassei, the serpent sting of the Baroness von Schlangenbad, the blackleg propensities of a gentleman with so common a name as Loder, or the Arabian tourist in Mr. Bedwin Sands. As far as we know, Mr. Thackeray is entitled, if not by right of invention at all events by right of improvement, to the patent right of this artifice for concealing art. It is easy to underrate the ingenuity and knowledge necessary in order to practise it with success. It is not every one that could like him invent a humorous Court Guide, Peerage, and Baronetage, that to all appearance are as solemn and authentic as those interesting publications themselves. Mr. Thackeray's style is such as might be expected from a man of the world. It is not what is called a fine style, but it is true, clear, and emphatic. It contains a great deal which would have shocked the late Doctor Blair, and very little that would have commanded the praise of that exploded old pedant. It frequently violates the canons of elegant composition laid down for the instruction of British youth, and would even, we think, supply examples of "incorrect" writing for a new edition (should it ever be called for) of the "Belles Lettres.' In fact it is never prim, formal or stilted. So keen a satirist as Mr. Thackery is not likely to commit the ludicrous inconsistency of treating familiar topics in any other than a familiar manner. He uses accordingly the hearty colloquial English in which educated men speak and think, and he finds it rich enough and plastic enough to clothe all his thoughts with ease and propriety. But though his English is colloquial, it is never slipshod. It is wonderfully condensed. It is wholly free from conventional flourishes and newspaper slang. The coldest logician will search it in vain for a false image, a confused metaphor, an inconsequence or a pointless quotation. The keenest pursuit will never detect in it a trace of corrupt taste or slovenly execution. It is free from the pompous Latinisms of the Johnsonian School, which allured so many of our ancestors, and the crude Germanism of Carlyle and Emerson, which seduce so many of our contemporaries. It is emphatically English a poor compliment, some may think, but a compli ment that critics can seldom honestly pay. He has enough of classical learning to salt his diction with that fine savour of scholarship which only scholar's taste; but he has also a qualification still more important for an English writer, that is not so common among our authors as we would have it. He has studied with devotion the great works of our elder literature, and learned to love their manly truthful spirit. He has communed with Massinger, Dryden and Pope, Steele, Addison and Fielding, Smollett and Goldsmith, and returned, as every one must, from such company with a large heart and wider sympathies, a generous admiration for excellence of all kinds, a hatred of falsehood, a tender compassion for frailty, a brave, genial, contented spirit, an honest pride in his country, and a love of the noble English tongue. It was a profound acquaintance with our English classics, Lord Brougham tells us, that more than compensated the great Lord Erskine for his ignorance of Demosthenes and Cicero, and gave him that wonderful command of pure language which distinguished him in the Senate and in Westminster Hall, in the days of Fox and Sheridan, Burke and Pitt. Whoever aspires to that kind of praise must draw from the same well of unpolluted water. ART. III. THE EMPEROR BABER AND HIS 1. A History of India under the two first Sovereigns of the house of Taimur, Báber, and Humayun. By WILLIAM ERSKINE, Esq. 1854. 2. Memoirs of Zehir-ed-din Muhammed Baber, written by himself, and translated partly by the late JOHN LEYDEN, Esq. M. D., partly by WILLIAM ERSKINE, Esq. 1826. WHEN Virgil re-appeared before the Roman world of literature in that tetrastich which begins with the words Ille ego qui quondam, he had only allowed seven or at most eight years to elapse from the publication of his former poems. In the meanwhile he had made an entire change of style and subject, having relinquished rural scenes and love-sick swains to sing of arms and a hero. But thirty seven years have passed since Mr. Erskine sent his memoirs of Báber for publication, and more than twenty-eight since they actually Design of Mr. Erskine's History. 85 issued from the press. During those years, instead of selecting a new subject, he has been employed with a tenacity of purpose which does him honour in collecting, arranging, and translating materials for a work which illustrates the same period, and the same countries, as had engaged his previous studies. His design extended much further than he was permitted to proceed, and we have to lament on his account, on his friends' account, and on the public's account that his progress was arrested when it was. If his history had been continued, so as to include the reign of the great Akber, it would not only have been more entertaining, but greater justice would also have been done by the author to his own distinguished abilities, since it would have afforded ample scope for the enunciation of political and economical principles. Το As it is, Mr. Erskine's two volumes are but an instalment of what was intended to be a ponderous work, and their fault is, that they are too ponderous, in fact a little leaden. Their tinge of dulness we attribute to causes which were in some degree unavoidable, but yet we conceive that the general plan of his compilation is a mistake. He has adopted what we may call the old style of modern history, that is, a style which, previous to the appearance of Gib bon's extraordinary work, was usually adopted in England. He has not paid attention to classification, which is most important for the successful discharge of an historian's office, and may be reduced to a science, that can only be attained with labour and difficulty. To classify and exhibit the peculiarities of several periods in separate views is by no means an easy task; for a writer is apt to find that his arrangement has been injudicious, and instead of lucidity leads to incongruity. Mr. Erskine appears to have left this task unattempted. He has been contented with simply following the course of his narrative, without directing any special efforts to an illustration of men, manners, and ideas. The ancient writers of Greece and Rome were wiser in their generation; nor would they have obtained and preserved their reputation, if they had not offered to their readers more than a chronicle of events. Herodotus and Livy appeal to a love of the marvellous; Thucydides is celebrated for his masterly episodes; Tacitus for his sententious sayings, and sound philosophy. Mr. Erskine, on the contrary, tries our patience with an unbroken chain of narrative. It is true that he has added in an Appendix a little information on subjects of which we long to know more; but this might have been worked up, and introduced with better effect into the body of his work. A conscientious anxiety to be accurate, indeed, leads him into the minutest details; but interesting as trifles sometimes are, they are not particularly so in his pages; and many charming passages of original works, which were under his eye and with which he was thoroughly acquainted, have been (we think injudiciously) omitted by him. Moreover, when striving to be exact he wearies us with repetitions, and burdens his own style with forms of expression, which were aptly employed by his Persian and Hindustání authorities, but do not fit well into the compilation of an Englishman. They cause us to miss sometimes the influence of one master mind, which ought always to be felt by the readers of an historical work. But we must not forget that the commencement of a history is necessarily its least interesting portion. Who would delight in the annals of Ancient Greece, if we had only accounts of the Cadmean period, and not of Athens in her glory? And how dull would the pages of English history appear to ordinary readers, if they could not get beyond the chapters on ancient Britons, and that puzzling Heptarchy! Our author then has been unfortunate in lighting amongst the feuds and border raids of Uzbek, Túrki and Moghul hordes, occupying himself only with the first sovereigns of a famous dynasty, and stopping short before he has reached the Augustan age of Indian history. His book has in consequence the appearance of raw material rather than a manufactured fabric, and it will be less acceptable to those who read for the sake of reading," than to those who like ourselves read in order to write. Yet Mr. Erskine's work-although not calculated to create a keen appetite in superficial readers-is beyond all question valuable and most important. Ornaments are lacking, but the structure itself is solid, and bids fair to be enduring. From a confused mass of materials the author has drawn a regular and authentic narrative. With a patience and industry such as are rarely discovered in books of the present day, he has translated and collated ancient Túrki, Persian and Hindustání manuscripts, and after weighing them in the scales of an unbiassed judgment, has handed to us their facts and sentiments, not with those blunders which may be detected in most Indian histories of European writers, but with precision and acuteness derived from Oriental experience. The Emperor Báber must be regarded as the hero of these two volumes, and he is without exception the most interesting person that figures in the neglected annals of India. We do not think him conspicuous for the ordinary talents of a conqueror. Chengíz Khan, Taimur, and many others were abler and more successful generals. Indeed a considerable period of Báber's life was a tissue of military errors, and when he succeeded in founding an Empire, it was not because he had strategic talents in an extraordinary degree, but because he was opposed by degenerate and divided enemies. He is not entitled to his apotheosis as having been the greatest of warriors, or even the wisest of statesmen ; but applying the words with which Dr. Parr tersely stated the comparative merits of Hooker, Barrow, The Turkish, Manchu, and Moghul Dynasties. 87 and Taylor, to the three greatest Emperors of India, we may say; that whilst we marvel at Aurangzíb and respect Akber, we love Báber. And let that numerous class of readers, who turn with disgust from Indian history, know that it would present to them at least one Asiarch, whose memory deserves their admiration and affectionate reverence. But we will not, by saying more in his praise, anticipate our narrative. Zehir-ed-din Muhammed Báber was of Tartar origin—as we have been accustomed to call it but it appears that in Europe this designation is used without proper discrimination. The Tartars were in reality but a small division of a tribe, and their name is incorrectly applied to the vast and migratory hordes with whom the memories of Chengíz Khan and Tamerlane have been associated, terrible fellows including the Oighurs or genuine Ogres, who still spread terror in English nurseries. There were three grand divisions of those hordes, differing from each other in manners, institutions, and languages. In the first division we place the Túrks, of whom the modern Turks are one branch; in the second the Tunguses and Manchús; in the third the Mongols or Moghuls. The Túrks were the most numerous. Of their tribe was Mahmúd of Ghazni, who in the eleventh century carried his victorious arms to the centre of India, the Seljúki dynasties, which were established in Persia, Damascus, and Aleppo, and the Mameluke sovereigns of Egypt. Othman also, who laid the foundations of the Ottoman Empire, was a Túrki Emir, and so was the great Taimur, whose conquests at the end of the fourteenth century extended from the Caspian sea to Delhi. The Manchús about two hundred years ago quered China, and are now struggling there for existence against the revivers of a native dynasty. The Mongols were raised to importance by their clansman, the mighty savage Chengíz, whose successors inheriting his ambition extended their empire over that immense region which lies between the Sea of Korea and the Adriatic. Two of these hordes have established themselves in India, and there become amalgamated. The larger number of Indian Mussulmans are of Túrki origin, although English history, adopting Native nomenclature, writes of all as "Moguls," and, echoing the language. of our countrymen who first visited these parts, styles the Emperors" Great Moguls." From early times adventurers of Túrki race resorted in quest of fortune to India, where having risen to eminence they obtained in the end possession of crowns and founded royal dynasties. Báber was of pure Moghul origin, although his paternal ancestors had so long resided in Túrki countries, that they con Ωκηρον μὲν σέβω, θαυμάζω δὲ Βάῤῥυον, καὶ φιλῶ Ταίλωρον. Parr's Note to his Spital Sermon. |