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��NOTES BY THE WAY.
��Longfellow.
��Christopher North.
��Robert Browning.
��Macaulay.
��George Meredith.
��On November 10th, 1855, Longfellow is congratulated on his new poem, ' The Song of Hiawatha,' and " on the success which has attended his labour." The reviewer recognizes him as
" a scholar and a poet. . . .In him we shall find, if not always masculine vigour and terseness, yet always freshness, tenderness, simplicity the thoughtful brain of a scholar, and the loving heart of a man."
In the same number Christopher North's ' Noctes ' are noticed,
"with all their faults, which are palpable enough,.... a valuable contribution to our literature. They are the effusions of a powerful mind wide and various in their subject, embracing the current topics of their time, and throwing no small light on its history. . . .The per- vading spirit is noble and generous. There is no smallness or soreness, no petty personal jealousy, no flippant disparagement, no malignity. Christopher North is eager to acknowledge merit in a political opponent. Even while he is holding up some unhappy wight to the derision of all mankind, his own temper is one of thorough kindliness and good humour."
On the 24th of November Browning's ' Men and Women ' is subjected to a furious attack. It is described as
" a book of madness and mysticism. . . .power wantonly wasted, and talent deliberately perverted .... We can find nothing but a set purpose to be obscure, and an idiot captivity to the jingle of Hudibrastic rhyme. This idle weakness really appears to be at the bottom of half the daring nonsense in this most daringly nonsensical book."
Goethe's ' Life and Works,' edited by Lewes, is reviewed on the 8th of December ; and in the same number Brougham's contribu- / tions to The Edinburgh Review are described as " a most interesting , record of the manifold activity of an extraordinarily powerful mind."
The third and fourth volumes of Macaulay's ' History ' are the subject of three articles, the first appearing on the 29th of December. The historian's style is thus described :
" He seldom substitutes in the second clause of a sentence a pronoun or an equivalent expression for a word which has been used in the first. The antithesis is completed and pointed by the repetition of the same subject in relation to predicates which are always various, and often studiously contradictory. Almost every page of the 'History' furnishes instances of this verbal peculiarity. . . .Mr. Macaulay may justly boast, notwithstanding the objections which critics may urge against his composition, that he has taught thousands to read history who had never before attempted so dry a study and that one of the most obscure portions of English annals is now more familiar to the great mass of educated persons than the struggles of the Commonwealth, the wars of Marlborough, or the loss of America."
On January 19th, 1856, George Meredith's ' The Shaving of Shagpat ' receives the highest praise :
" A quaint title ushers in an original and charming book, the work of a poet and a story-teller worthy to rank with the rare story-tellers
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