Literary Gossip

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LITERARY GOSSIP.

MACAULAY.—Macaulay,¹ it is said, has given up the idea of continuing his “History of England” down to a period within the memory of living men, as at first announced, and will conclude it with the death of Queen Anne. We regret the fact, if it be so, indeed. It will be many and many a long year before another Macaulay will arise, worthy to continue the work, and, meantime, we shall lose a brilliant picture of the last century—a period crowded with illustrious events—from the pen of the only man, perhaps, competent to the execution of the task. Every lover of letters must join in the heart-felt wish that Lord Macaulay (we like him best as plain Thos. B., notwithstanding his recent consent to ennoble the Peerage) may live to a green and glorious old age to complete the “monument more enduring than brass” which is to perpetuate his name to the coming ages.

A POET MARRIED.—We see that James Russel Lowell,² one of the truest of our poets, has been united in bands Hymeneal to a Miss Francis Dunlap, niece of Ex-Governor Dunlap of Maine. Poets generally have the reputation of making indifferent husbands, but like most popular ideas, this is a popular fallacy. An occasional Platonic flirtation with the Nine surely cannot, of itself, make a man deaf to the sublunary necessities of crinoline, baby-caps and butchers’ bills. Lowell, too, is a “grave and reverend Signior,” a college professor, and fast verging toward middle-age. On the whole, we think we may venture to congratulate Miss D.

GAILLARDET AND THE TRIBUNE—Mr. Frederick Gaillardet,³ an exceedingly Frenchy Frenchman was, for some time, editor of the Courier des Etats Unis, in New York. Latterly he has retired to chere France and is attached to the Presse newspaper in which he expatiates on American life and character. In a paper on “American Suicides” he takes for his text Senator Rusk’s unhappy end. The peculiarity of American suicides is, he says, that they take place not among social outcasts, but among the rich and respected. And for this bold generalization he alleges, as a basis, 1, the name of Senator Rusk; 2, the head of a large financial concern in New York, who died many years ago; and 3, a nameless Philadelphia maiden, who, in spite of riches, beauty, goodness, and apparently gratified affection, fell victim to heartbreak and suicide. Mr. Gaillardet gives as the cause of our peculiar suicides, “the prevalence of the sentiment of individualism,” meaning thereby nothing more nor less than selfishness, or the absence of the social sentiment, and proceeds to argue, at length, on this assumption. Thereupon the Paris correspondent of the Tribune writes a long letter, ridiculing Frenchmen in general, and Gaillardet in particular, quarrelling with the latter’s low ideas of “Individualism,” and taking two columns to explain what “Individualism” is, after carefully perusing which the reader unlearned in the Emersonian philosophy will doubtless be as wise as before. A wordy contest of this kind between the antipodes of humanity, a Frenchman and a New England Transcendentalist, is very much like a duel in the dark—neither party has, nor can have, the slightest idea of what the other is driving at.

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