THE UNITED STATES LITERARY GAZETTE. Published on the first and fifteenth day of every month, by Cummings, Hilliard, & Co. No. 1 Cornhill, Boston.Terms, $5 per annum, payable in July. VOL. I. two Friends. Notes a PROSPECTUS. ave determined to publish a new Prival work, and as many are now per, Esq in this country, and many more the possess attempted and abandoned, we D. Rector avour to state at some length, Females in commencing another. By the au perfectly aware how difficult it A Tre overcome the indifference, works In two V we propose, encounter at their of Linc We do, however, expect success, By Dani we are confident of our ability to chusetts Literary Gazette, which shall be Picuseful to the reading public of this Massay, and to all who are interested in A rs relative to literature, either in the Fof business or amusement. We have "seen and felt the want of such a work; ti hope to supply an existing demand; to fer to a large portion of this community, a gratification suited to their tastes and not now provided for them. We shall endeavour to give to the United States Literary Gazette, a strictly national character. If we do not fail in executing our intentions, it will communicate a distinct and accurate impression of the literary and intellectual condition and progress of this country. A large proportion of our pages will be filled with reviews of works published here, either of domestic or foreign origin; every book which issues from the press of this country, and comes within our reach, shall receive from us such notice as its character and pretensions deserve. We shall also publish whatever interesting information we can gather, concerning our national literature, education, and public opinions. BOSTON, APRIL 1, 1824. occasionally inserted. In freely admitting No. 1. of every month. Each number will contain 16 quarto pages-one or two of which may be used for advertisements-and will be printed on paper of superior quality. It will be sent to distant subscribers on the day of publication, by the mail of that day, or in any other way they shall prescribe. Terms-$5 per annum, payable in six months from its commencement. Subscriptions received at our Bookstore, No. 1 Cornhill. CUMMINGS, HILLIARD, & Co. Boston, Feb. 1824. THE editor of this paper is perfectly sensible of his inability to sustain alone the burthen of such a work as, it is hoped, this will become. But his extensive and very satisfactory arrangements with gentlemen who stand high among the scholars and writers of our country, encourage him to believe, that the Literary Gazette, he is about to conduct, will be a valuable addition to our periodical literature. We shall not aim at giving a value to our Gazette by profound researches into science and philosophy, or by lengthened and intricate speculations. Our numbers shall not be filled with literary gossip; neither shall they be composed of articles which are not to be understood and appreciated but with a degree of labor almost equal to that required for their composition, and cannot be enjoyed without a singularity of taste and mental habits. We shall endeavour to avoid with equal care both these extremes, and we now offer our first number to the public, that by it they may judge of our plan, and No existing journal, at least none in this of the means we have provided for its exe- country, actually performs the uses of a cution. We however ask, what in common General Review; and it will be a leading equity must be granted, that the difficulties principle in the conduct of the Gazette, to of making a beginning should be duly con- maintain this character. It is obviously sidered. Many gentlemen have engaged impossible that any individual should critto contribute to our pages, and in justice to icise justly books of every sort; the editor them it is proper for us to say, that among certainly would not think of undertaking a them are minds as highly gifted by nature, task so far beyond his ability; but he has to and as well nurtured and disciplined by thank many who honour him with their habits of study and composition, as those friendship, for the kindness, which has promemployed in the support of any periodicalised to this work the assistance of such a work in this land. Some pages of each number will be filled with Literary and Scientific Intelligence. Great care and assiduity will be used to ensure to this department of the Gazette, interest and value. It may be well to remark, that our extensive connexion with booksellers, at home and abroad, will enable us to supply our editors and contributors promptly, with almost every new publication of every kind. variety and extent of talent and knowl- REVIEWS. Books intended to subserve the purposes of education, have, within a few years, been greatly improved and multiplied. Much of the best talent and skill of this age has been employed upon mere school books; and histories, travels, tales, &c. calculated Course of Instruction in the Public Schools for the tastes and requirements of youth, No injury to the established Journals, can in Boston. Boston, 1823. 8vo. have been written with great power, print- be involved in the success of our proposed THIS pamphlet is filled with valuable ined in the cheapest forms, and circulated work; many of them are useful and hon- formation. The public instruction providthroughout the community with strenuous orable to the literature of this country, and ed by the city of Boston for all her citiindustry. Such works must exert a power- we should deeply regret to impede their zens, who are disposed to avail themselves ful influence, either of good or evil; we usefulness or lessen its rewards. We be- of it, is an almost unexampled instance of think they have not received due attention long to the same class of literary works, that true wisdom which is one with just libfrom the journals professedly devoted to but our paths lie in different directions; erality. It is not the effort of individuals reviewing the current literature of the are; and it cannot be doubted, that literary pub- to build an asylum for resourceless poverty, and shall endeavour to supply this deficien- lications profit each other, by increasing or to establish permanent relief for the cy by making our readers acquainted with and confirming the appetite which demands wretched;—but it is a magnanimous deterthe true character of all books, written to and enjoys them. A successful work, al-mination and endeavour of a body politic, aid them in a work of such importance as most of necessity, enlarges the circle of to prevent the severest evils which embitter the education of their children. those, who are prepared to read with pleas-life and render it useless; to remove the Notices of foreign works, which lead toure another work of a similar character. efficient and fertile sources of misery and topics or considerations applicable to the The United States Literary Gazette will sin, by substituting the unspeakable good of affairs or interests of this country, will be be published on the first and fifteenth day education, for a childhood and youth of un will taught, unreclaimed, and unsubdued ignorance and wilfulness. There child. In these schools the children are tinct school, of the system of mutual intructaught to read and spell correctly, and thus tion with very satisfactory success. One The attention paid to education in most to fit themselves effectually for the higher hundred and sixty children, who were too parts of the civilized world, is a striking schools. Pupils are first received at four old for the primary schools and unqualified characteristic of this age, and a proof that years of age, which is quite as soon as the to enter the grammar schools, were receivman is beginning to be blessed with a bet-discipline and instruction of a school can ed and instructed in the same branches as ter discernment of the true end and uses of be applied to advantage. These schools are taught in the other schools by one maslife, and a greater willingness to regard are numerous, because experiment has prov-ter at a much less expense. moral and intellectual good, as more valua-ed that fifty or sixty children are as many The English Classical School was estabble than any thing beside. In England the as one mistress can successfully instruct, and lished for the admirable purpose of providefforts of many prominent men, to institute because it is important that the schools ing for lads intending to become merchants a system of general education, are well should be as near as possible to the homes or mechanics, means of more extended and known. The discoveries of Lancaster and of the infant pupils. Their object and effect complete instruction than they could obtain Bell have applied to the work of instruc- is to bring the first rudiments of education at any of the other public schools. tion, principles of great efficacy. In the near to the doors of all who are wise enough are four instructers, and no scholars are adbest parts of Europe schools of various and kind enough to their children to avail mitted under twelve years of age. The kinds have been established, which in most themselves of them. All the Primary Schools course continues during three years, but instances are supported by the strength of are under the immediate care of a board, the branches of most importance are made public opinion, and, in many, also receive consisting of fifty members, who are divid- to fall within the first year, as many of the princely or royal patronage. Of some of ed and subdivided into various committees, scholars are unable to remain in the school these institutions, the object is to give to armed with proper powers and charged with after they are old enough to do something the highest ranks suitable education; of corresponding responsibilities. The great- for their own support. The studies in this others, to reclaim the lower classes from est care is taken to secure, by mutual, school embrace Intellectual and Written reckless and irregular habits, by the power ceaseless, and exact report and supervision, Arithmetic, Geography and the use of the of discipline, and to give them useful knowl- a faithful and efficient execution of this well globes, Grammar, History, Book-keeping, edge for utter ignorance. These indica- organized system. The monthly, quarterly, Elements of some Arts and Sciences, Comtions may be fallacious,-they may promise and semi-annual written reports are made position and Declamation, Geometry, Algeless than we think they do,-this progress every year with unvarying regularity and bra, Trigonometry, Natural Philosophy and and tendency, if it exist, may be checked or equal in quantity more than a thousand pages. History, Chemistry, Moral Philosophy, Natmade to retrograde ;-but assuredly it is Each child is faithfully examined at least ural Theology, Rhetoric, Evidences of Chrisright for us to rejoice in an unquestionable twelve times a year, and many, much of- tianity, Intellectual Philosophy, Political growth and improvement of important hu- tener. Economy, Logic, and the French Lanman institutions, and to expect therefrom extensive and valuable influence upon human character. The Latin School is the last which we shall have occasion to notice, as it completes the course of public instruction. Our limits will not allow us to speak of this school at much length. The Grammars are first thoroughly learned, and the course of study makes the scholars familiar with selected parts of Cicero, Horace, Juvenal and Persius, Xenophon, Homer, Wittenbach's Greek Historians, and the Greek Testament, together with Geography, Arithmetic, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Algebra. Very considerable portions of the best Latin and Greek poets are committed to memory. From these schools, scholars who are pro-guage. perly prepared, go to the English Grammar and Writing Schools, which are in two rooms; In this improvement the city of Boston the two branches being kept entirely distakes the lead; we are justified in saying tinct. Each room has a master and assistant, so, because nowhere else has a large city and accommodates three hundred children. made an universal and strenuous effort to From the middle of April to the middle of awaken in her youth a love of knowledge, October girls attend these schools, spendand to fix in them habits of order at that peri-ing half the day in the reading and half in od of life, when those impressions are receiv- the writing room, and alternating with the ed, of which the successive development in boys. It is supposed girls would not attend some sort constitutes the character. The during the inclement season, and in the work is begun as soon as it can be with any half year in which they are excluded, the prospect of advantage, and is continued un- boys are divided between the rooms; the til that age when the education of schools first and lowest classes being separated must give way to the business of active from the intermediate classes. The readlife. The system of public and universal ing schools are subdivided into four classes, One very useful, valuable, and, we beinstruction, in operation in this city, has of which the upper two are peculiarly un- lieve, rather peculiar improvement, is adoptbeen gradually improved as experience and der the master's care, but he is strictly re-ed in this and in the English Classical the sagacity of the directors suggested al-sponsible for the whole. Geography is School. Every one who has had any conterations. It is now in most successful cern with a school, either as a scholar or operation, and a pamphlet has been printed master, is perfectly aware of the great for the purpose of presenting to the considhindrance arising from the classification of eration of the public the various parts of boys according to the studies they pursue, this system, connected as they are into one and not according to their disposition and orderly and admirable whole. We shall capacity for making progress in them. The inake a brief extract of the information this intelligent and quick are thus made lazy by pamphlet contains, certain that, while many the necessity of imposing only such tasks as even in Boston are ignorant of the great the dull can learn, and the few who aremost good that is among them, to residents of industrious are retarded by the indolent other towns these facts must be new, and many. In these schools this difficulty is alto all, everywhere, interesting. most wholly obviated. As the boys reach the top of the class they are taken off by ten or twelve and formed into a distinct class by themselves. As scholars are admitted but once a year, they soon get sorted in this way with great accuracy; those boys finding themselves together who are able to learn about the same lesson. The Primary Schools, instructed by women, receive all children of either sex between four and seven years of age. In 1823 there were forty such schools for the white and two for the coloured population, and the whole number enrolled was 2,205, giving an average of 52 to each school, and an average of expense to the public of $1.72 per annum for the instruction of each taught only to the highest class, but less is state, once a year. But one objection can possibly be urged against any part of these institutions. Perhaps the system of animating the pupils into industry by the principle of emulation, and rewarding them by medals, cards, &c. of which the object is to distinguish them from their fellows, is carried too far. Emulation easily becomes envy, and it is obviously better to make the love of doing well the ruling principle of a boy's activity, rather than the love of doing better than another. 3 This passage exhibits a striking instance of the blending of various images into one, and thus presenting a picture entirely new. Though Anacreon says of Cupid, Ρόδα παῖς ὁ τῆς Κυθήρης Στέφεται καλοῖς ἰούλοις, a school committee, consisting of the mayor" emptity." Whitehead was poet laureate. | loveliness, like a new creation. I cannot and aldermen, ex officio, and one gentleman All new poetry was submitted to the judg-better exemplify my meaning, than by chosen annually by each ward. They are ment of Johnson's powerful but prosaic tracing to its possible originals the following required by their own rules to examine the intellect; Pope and Young were in full beautiful picture of Collins'. schools once a month, and, by a law of the vogue,-Thompson was sneered at,-Gray Love framed with Mirth a gay fantastic round;ridiculed,-Collins utterly neglected,-and, Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound,— to crown the climax, the Reviewer of And he amid his frolic play, Goldsmith's Traveller "in sad and sober As if he would the charming air repay, earnest criticised it as a pamphlet in verse, Shook thousands odours from his dewy wings. on political economy." This state of things could not last; but it is with the literary taste of a nation, as with the natural taste of an individual; when it has been pampered with high-seasoned sauces till the appetite is jaded, it craves not nor relishes substantial food, and can only be restored by a course of the simplest diet. This book therefore seems to have been necessary to the English nation, before it could be prepared either to produce, or to receive and and relish such poets as Crabbe and Joan-Tasso, says of the angel Gabriel, na Baillie and Wordsworth and Southey; He shook his wings with rosy May-dews wet; poets, whose style, simple in artificial orna- and though Milton says of the angel Raphment, yet not utterly rejecting it, is the vehi- ael, cle of such poetry as would have been sufficient, had they only written, to have raised this age of English poetry to a fair comparison with that of Elizabeth. We mention these four poets, because, perfect-the less original; for he has compounded it yet the imagery of Collins does not appear from all the others, and taking something from each, has produced a new image of his own. We close this article with stating one fact; that the whole expenditure of Boston, city and county, for 1823, was $197,977.60, of which $48,611.10 were expended for the schools;-and we will add to this fact, the last paragraphs of this pamphlet, which state strongly, but truly, the effect of this liberality. "Thus we have endeavoured to give a view of the means, provided at the public expense, for the gratuitous instruction of the children of all classes of the citizens of Boston. They are offered equally distinct as they are, from each other, ly to all. The poorest inhabitant may have his the style of them all is less ornate than that children instructed from the age of four to seventeen, at schools, some of which are already equal, of most of their contemporaries, and seems if not superior to any private schools in our coun- more deeply imbued with the colouring of try; and all of them may be so. an earlier and severer literature. "Indeed if a child be kept at a Primary School from four to seven, and then at one of the Grammar schools until nine, and from that time till sev enteen at the Latin and the English Classical school, there is no question but he will go through a more thorough and complete course of instruction, and in reality enjoy greater advantages than are provided at many of the respectable colleges in the Union." It is not often that we are admitted to the workshop of genius, but we know that men of the most exalted powers must have materials to work upon; we know that writers must form their style both of language and thought upon the models of others. If the first essays of any of the living English poets were to be published, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry; con- I doubt not that we should find among them sisting of old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and many imitations of the ballads which Percy other pieces of our earlier poets, together has collected; indeed Scott and Southey with some few of later date. First Amer- and Byron have published their boyish ican from the fifth London edition. Phil-poems, and among them such imitations adelphia, 1823. 3 vols. 8vo. are found. These are not however servile MANY critics of the present day, acknowl-imitations, but are evidently the essays of edge that the superiority of Modern Eng-powerful intellects, trying their strength lish poetry over that of the age of Queen in short, low flutterings, and thus imping Anne, is mainly to be attributed to this their wings for a bolder flight. work. It may seem surprising, that a book It is not by direct imitation of one parso unpresuming in its appearance, as Per- ticular model that excellence can be atcy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry, should tained; but the course which these poets have helped to produce so wonderful a rev-pursued was that which has been taken by olution in the public taste, as has evidently occurred since the time of its publication. But the poetry and criticism of that day were at a very low ebb; Pope and Addison were gone; they had themselves teen servile imitators, and the still more grovelling herd of their imitators, wrote as if smooth metre and ambitious ornaments alone constituted poetry; no matter how trite the thoughts, if the lines were exactly balanced, nor how prosaic the subject, if an epithet were crowded into each hemistich all truly great writers-to imbibe the spirit of those who had gone before them, to select the peculiar excellence of each great master of their art, to melt down and amalgamate their several beauties in the alembic of their own minds, and, out of all, produce one harmonious form of elegance that should ever thereafter be exclusively theirs. As with their style, so with their subjects. They made their minds the storehouses of beautiful images, gathered from all quarters-from nature and from books, and Whoever has the patience to examine brooded over them till they had analyzed the Magazine poetry of that day, will find them, and combined and remoulded them that the only quality for which the popular into perfect form, and could produce them poetry was then remarkable, was what a to the world, apparently the work of their critic has well expressed in one word-own imaginations, and gleaming in virgin Hath his locks y'crowned with roses, though Fairfax, in his translation of He shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance filled The circuit wide; Every great poet has founded a school; but as each succeeding copy lost something of the freshness of the original, at length the samness began to pall upon the reader's ear, until some youthful aspirant, warned by the utter failure of his last predecessor, perceived that he must cast his projected work in a new mould, and make a hazardous experiment to reform the public taste. Look at the History of Poetry;— the names of Homer and Virgil and Tasso long kept alive the hope that successive generations might be blest with a succession of Epics; but Milton's was the last Epic,* and he dared to wander so far from the beaten track, that his Hero cannot be named. Look next at the Romances;they had their day, but they had become tiresome in the time of Chaucer, who called in the aid of Italian literature, and founded a new school having him for its master. Lydgate and Hawes and Gower wore out the style of Chaucer. Allegories and Madrigals were popular from the time of Spencer and Withers, down to the days of Henry More and Waller. Then indeed it was time to stop allegorizing in verse, when an elegant scholar like More, and one whom a competent judge (Southey) *We say the last Epic, because we conceive Voltaire's Henriade to be slumbering with Blackmore's Eliza and her brothers (whose numbers and names are forgotten), Wilkie's Epigoniad, Cumthur, Sonthey's Joan of Arc, and many more; berland's Calvary, Glover's Leonidas, Hole's ArПáve' äua raūra rítvanı, xai wxero movòv is 'Aday. "All together they perished, and went to the trunk- |