ART. VI.-The Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington. By R. R. MADDEN, M. R. I. A. Author of Travels in the East," "Infirmities of Genius," &c., &c. 3 Vols. London, 1855.

THERE is nothing about which critics are wont to blunder more than about what they call "book-making." It is no small thing to make a book. Many who can write books can not make them. A skilful "book-maker," indeed, is a person to be encouraged and extolled. The nomenclature is not rightly that of reprobation and contempt. And yet when a man has failed to make a book, it is the fashion to stigmatize him as a "bookmaker," as though book-making were the easiest thing in the world, success in which is to be accounted a reproach.

In truth, it may be said of book-making, as Mr. Carlyle said of needle-work, that the saddest thing of all is that, whilst of distracted puckering and blotching there is more than enough, of genuine work worthy to be so called there is scarcely any to be had. There is paper and there is print; an editor's name on the title-page-a lord's perhaps, or a cabinet-minister's-and there is much readable matter within the covers; but the gross result, with all its distracted puckering and botching, is not a book. It is a thing of some sort, but not to be called a book. A book has been required, perhaps intended; but it has not been produced. A house is not made by throwing down so many thousands of bricks, higgledy-piggledy, upon a grass-plat ; nor is a garden to be made by emptying out so many drawersful of seeds and cuttings, with promiscuous liberality. In either case the result, doubtless, is something. But that something is not a house or a garden; and the same process cannot make a book.

Many qualities, not very common in themselves among literary men, and very rare in combination, are required to make an expert book-maker. Many chests-ful of papers are placed before him, and he is required to convert them into a certain number of volumes. The materials of a book-of a good book-are there. But to convert these materials into a book, it is necessary that the maker should possess in himself much more than the chests contain. He must have patience to peruse all the papers submitted to him; judgment to select; method to arrange them. He must have a thorough knowledge of the subject to be treated of, or he will not know how to peruse, how to select, or how to arrange. He must possess, too, certain antagonistic qualitiesqualities to hold each other in check. He must be genial and yet severe. He must have a warm heart, and yet a cool head.

He must be appreciative and yet exclusive-sympathetical and yet obdurate-prodigal and yet chary. If he be not thus diversely gifted, he will accept or he will reject in excess. His book will have too much in it or too little. It will be clumsily obese, or weakly attenuated. Even of order-Heaven's and the book-maker's "first law"-there may be too much. Method must sometimes be jogged by impulse, and arrangement stimulated into occasional errors of discursiveness. The book-maker must know, indeed, like the Apostle, how to want and how to abound. The very qualities which contribute most to fit him for his office, will essentially unfit him for it, if not held in just control.

The besetting infirmity of authors is egotism. It is necessary above all things that a book-maker should not be an egotist. We do not mean by this that he should not talk about himself. There is egotism, in its utmost intensification, where the personal pronoun is never used. We mean, that he must not shape his work in the mould of his own personal feelings and predilections. He must continually bear in mind that the audience to which he addresses himself is not composed of so many copies of himself that the passages in letters or journals which make the strongest impression on his own mind may not make the same impression on others'-that their interest may be derived rather from certain idiosyncrasies or associations of his own than from any general attractiveness inherent in the selections themselves. It would be curious and instructive to give copies of precisely the same papers to two or more workmen, with instructions to each to select from them materials for certain volumes, of biography, for example, and to shape the materials so selected into a book. That from the hands of these different craftsmen would come books so unlike each other as scarcely to seem to have been constructed from the same materials-hardly, perhaps, to relate to the same subject, is not to be doubted. Each writer would probably have been thinking more about himself than about his audience, and have coloured his subject from the prevailing hues of his own mind. When a literary workman deals with the writings of others-when it is his vocation to construct from pre-existing materials, in which he has none other than an acquired property, the temptation to egotism comes upon him in its most subtle, insidious, and unsuspected shape, and is proportionately irresistible.

For these and other reasons, into which the requirements of time and space forbid us to enter, we hold that the vocation of a book-maker, rightly considered, is one by no means to be lightly regarded or contemptuously described. To make a book, as we have said, is no small thing. The evil is, that so many work

men attempt to make books and fail. In this category we are afraid that we must include the Editor of the "Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington." It is a mistake to call it "a book-making affair." There is no bookmaking in it. Dr. Madden has given us three amusing volumes about almost everybody under the sun. The work is a mixture of the Magazine and the Biographical Dictionary. It would be almost impossible to read it through from beginning to end. And yet, doubtless, it has been read, and will be read, by a vast number of people-and many parts twice over. You may begin your studies where you like. There is no particular reason why any part of the book is in any particular place. You never know what volume you are reading-whether you are at the beginning or the end of the work. Wherever you may chance to be, the book may as well end in the next chapter as in any other; and when you do come to the end, you feel that such is the plan, or the no-plan, of the work, that you may just as well be carried on through three, or even six more volumes. Until you are accustomed to the mode of treatment, you are startled at times-but you soon cease to be surprised at meeting anything in any place; and you dip into it, as you would into a scrap-book.

"The task I have undertaken," says Dr. Madden, "is to illustrate the literary life of Lady Blessington." He does not profess to offer the public a regular biography of that accomplished lady. It would be unjust, therefore, to condemn him for failing to accomplish what he has not even attempted. The book purports to be "The Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington." And this it is; and much more than this. The three handsome volumes before us contain the Literary Lives and Correspondence of all Lady Blessington's friends; and a good number of lives, too, which are not literary. All Gore House, in its palmiest days, is emptied into the streets; and we find ourselves continually exclaiming, as one celebrity after another issues from the portals of the Kensingtonian mansion, "Who would have thought of seeing you here?" Some meet us with sheaves of letters under their arms, and detain us for a while, whilst we dip into their correspondence. Others, carrying only their hats in their hands, make their bows and pass on in silence. Dr. Madden tells us more than once, that the best literary society of the times was to be found assembled in Lady Blessington's salons. Tastes and opinions may differ upon this point; but it is not to be doubted that many very distinguished men were to be seen there, and that a large number of these were correspondents, more or less, of the fascinating hostess. It was, therefore, within the legitimate scope of such a work as

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this to intersperse it with slight sketches of the principal habitués of Gore House, and to illustrate it with specimens of their correspondence. But there is a total want of proportion and perspective in the work. The accessories are magnified to the dimensions of the principal figures. What other book-makers would throw into a note, Dr. Madden parades in all the importance of large "pica," as a part of his text. Whole chapters from such erudite and rare works as Mr. Willis's "Pencillings by the Way," are interpolated with a prodigal hand; and we are treated to biographical notices of such little known people, inter alios, as the Duke of Wellington, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Miss Landon, and Lord Brougham. It is a better book than Mr. Patmore's "Friends and Acquaintance," because its morality is more endurable, and its impertinence less; but it resembles in many respects that objectionable work, and might have been published under the same title.

Indeed, the volumes now before us, in spite of all that has been said, and much more that might be said against them, impress us with a favourable opinion of the writer. There is a candour, a sincerity about them, which seem to indicate that he is an honest, well-intentioned, kind-hearted man. strong national propensity to blunder, he seems to unite an earnest desire to speak the truth; and with all his Irish generosity, there is mingled a strong sense of what is due to morality and religion, which will not suffer him to gloss over what is evil, or to call things by their wrong names. He often perplexes us; sometimes astonishes us; frequently raises a smile at his expense; but he never excites our indignation. And when we remember that Dr. Madden's subject was a difficult one; that too much toleration brought to bear upon it would have been as offensive as too little, we are bound to give him credit for the manner in which he has kept clear of either extreme. A writer of infinite tact and great artistic skill might have failed to accomplish what the present writer, who is no artist, and who has little tact, has achieved by the unaided force of his own honesty and sincerity of purpose. There is no cant in these volumes; and there is no laxity. Even in the literary life of Lady Blessington, it was necessary to advert to matters notorious both in English and continental society, which have imparted an ill odour to her name; but only when it was necessary, has he touched upon these painful topics, and then in language neither of specious apology, nor unpitying condemnation.

The volumes, too, have another recommendation: they are infinitely more amusing than many a better book. That people like to read about their friends and acquaintance-about "Every one in turn and no one long," is a fact of which publishers, at

least, are sufficiently cognizant. The gossipy is generally the saleable. But gossiping books relating to cotemporary celebrities, are often mischievous and ill-natured. There appears to us to be little mischief and no ill-nature in these volumes. Lady Blessington, as we have said, had an extensive correspondence, principally with living writers; and Dr. Madden has published, with permission, we believe, a considerable number of letters addressed to her ladyship by Dickens, Bulwer, and others, whom the public are ever curious to see in the undress of familiar epistolary intercourse. They are, for the most part, lively, entertaining letters, the publication of which can do no harm to the writers or to any one else. For our own parts, knowing that many very clever men ordinarily write very indifferent letters, our chief wonder is that the greater part of this varied correspondence is so readable and so good.

That so recommended, the "Literary Life and Correspondence of Lady Blessington" should have had many readers, can excite no surprise. We observe that Dr. Madden has advertised a new edition of his work, and has invited aid and assistance from all quarters to render the new issue more complete than the old. Perhaps he will thank us, therefore, for calling his attention to a few errors, which are, however, so patent, that we should think they could hardly escape the editor's eye a second time, or even the publisher's or printer's. Dr. Madden has something to say about almost every one whose name is mentioned in his volumes. If he names a statesman, howsoever well known, he must tell us what have been his public acts; if he names an author, what are his works. There would be something rather ludicrous in these efforts to acquaint the world with what we should have thought every one had known before, if Dr. Madden's numerous lapses had not assured us that even men who have a large literary and political acquaintance, may have a very imperfect knowledge of the facinora of those with whom they are in continual intercourse. We cannot afford space to notice all the errors which we have marked in the course of our desultory progresses through these three volumes; but it may be of service to the editor, should others have failed to render him this assistance, to have his attention called to the following inaccuracies. To begin with the Statesmen

In vol. iii. page 7 mention is made of Lord Wellesley, who is described as "the conqueror of Tippoo Sahib and the Nizam." Lord Wellesley, however, did not conquer, but protect the Nizam. The Nizam helped him to conquer Tippoo.

At page 43 of the same volume, another Indian statesman, Lord Auckland, is said to have been "appointed LieutenantGovernor of India in 1835, and recalled in 1841." He was not