Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

straits east and west, very nearly in a circular curve, as far as the power of vision can ascertain, there lies an immense continent of ice, rising towards the Pole, and towards the islands before mentioned, descending like the regular declivity of the land mentioned by Bruce in the approach to the sources of the Nile. In this descent innumerable channels are visible, eaten away by the snow which is dissolved annually under the presence of the sun. In some places it out-tops the islands, but leans upon them all; and it is probably owing to this very chain of islands presenting an impenetrable barrier, that the descent of larger portions of the icy continent have not before now carried their chilling aspect into southern climates.'-pp. 94, 95.

Thus, instead of an open sea beyond these islands, it would now appear, that this interminable continent,' the source of all the ice-bergs that float to the southward, abuts on them and out-tops them, (like the overhanging eaves of a thatched roof,) rising towards the North Pole, as the summit of the ridge!

We cannot be sufficiently thankful to these eighty buttresses, which Bernard O'Reilly has discovered, for preventing a southerly visitation of this icy continent with its chilling aspect.' Its presence, however, would not seem to offer any very great annoyance to the neighbouring inhabitants of Greenland. It is not here, as in other parts of the world, that frost, snow, and elevation of surface, occasion cold; on the contrary they are the sources of heat. Of this we cannot doubt, being assured that the elevated lands produce in themselves such an absorption of solar heat, during the summer months, as to make the atmosphere insupportably sultry (Introduction, p. 13.); that the heat of the sun reflected from the snow and ice, and also from the face of the rock, is intolerable; and that when knee-deep in snow, the head and body are involved in a burning atmosphere.' (p. 191.)

This extraordinary developement of heat from ice and snow (which, by the way, is noted, in what he calls a journal, from 33° to 40° of Fahrenheit in the month of July) might be expected to produce some extraordinary effect on the vegetation of Greenlandand so it does about Disco, near the icy continent;' for there the accumulation of heat is so great that all vegetable life is rapidly evolved,' (p. 271); on the southern part of Greenland, however, in about 60° of lat., the thermal influence ceases, and with it all appearance of vegetation. The ship Thomas, it is true, was never within sight of any land on this part of the coast; but that is nothing-Bernard O'Reilly's 'power of vision' enables him, like the witches in Macbeth, to see beyond the ignorant present.'-Indeed we are perfectly astonished at the unremitting attention which he appears to have bestowed on this picturesque country. Not a single day passes in which the cirrhus, the cirrhostratus, the agglomerated cumulostratus, cirrhocumulus, and the nimbus are not detected in playing

their gambols, perpetually intermingling with each other, dancing through the misty atmosphere, and producing over the more misty pages of his quarto, as numerous and as various transmutations as may be seen in the tube of a kaleidoscope; all this he has pilfered, and converted into nonsense, from Forster's Systematic Arrangement of the Clouds.' With respect to the country itself, he gravely assures us that it is a grievous mistake to suppose it took its name from any thing green about it. The origin is totally different, and is plainly discoverable in the language of the natives. It is called 'Succanunga,' the Land of the Sun; but, lest we should not do justice to our author's learned and interesting speculation,' as he calls it, we present our readers with the passage entire.

'A classical reader, familiar with the works of Greek and Roman writers, will recollect that an epithet for the noon-day Apollo, when clad in Latin form, is Grynæus. Grynæus Apollo forms an adulatory invocation in the prayer of Eneas, who was at once a priest and prince according to the Phrygian mythological system. General Vallancy, who bestowed much and very extraordinary labour on the subject of antiquities, particularly those referable to eastern origin, has fixed on the word Grian, of Irish or Celtic signification, as it may be received, being epithetically expressive of the strongest power of the sun, which is synonymous among all ancient nations with the Apollo of Grecian mythology. To avoid, therefore, invidious reference as to intercourse with the Greenlanders, it may be fairly admitted, that the synonyme, by whatever voyager to these parts communicated, is justly explained by the above terms: let us view them in connexion :

[ocr errors]

Succanuk-the Sun.

Grian-Apollo, or the Sun.

Succanunga-Greenland. Grianland-Land of the Sun. The Land of the Sun, or Sunny-land, as familiarly may be said, corresponds with the simple appellation which the natives give their country. The adventurers who came in aftertimes to seek the same shores, not probably understanding the meaning of the term, yet spelling the word as they could from hearing it often repeated, were inclined to write Grianland in their mode Groenland, which sounds very nearly alike, but in the language of Denmark has no reference to the original. pp. 14, 15.

There is a trifling mistake in this 'interesting speculation;' but it is rather favourable to the view of the subject as taken by Bernard O'Reilly, Esquire. With submission to his superior knowledge, we take leave to observe, that Grynæus is not exactly an epithet for the noon-day Apollo,' but rather of a grove sacred to Apollo. His tibi Grynæi nemoris dicatur origo :

Ne quis sit lucus, quo se plus jactet Apollo.

Now as the ancients had a way of naming things by the 'rule of contraries,' as 'lucus a non lucendo,' an instance in point, nothing is more probable than that Eneas conferred the name of Grynaanland, or land of groves, on this delightful country, because he

could not meet with a single twig upon it. Mr. O'Reilly has our permission to print this further elucidation' in the second edition of his quarto.

To be serious for a moment-General Valencey, (from whom most of this rambling stuff is taken,) though a man of learning, wrote more nonsense than any man of his time; and has unfortunately been the occasion of much more than he wrote. His reveries which, as they came from him, afforded occasional glimpses of ingenuity, when taken up by those who, like Bernard O'Reilly, have neither learning, nor taste, nor judgment, nor even common sense to direct them, degenerate into mere absurdities, too mad for reason, too foolish for mirth.

He, however, is so elated with his success, in the etymological line,' that he pursues his inquiries with increased vigour. He has actually collected a vocabulary of no less than six and twenty words of pure Esquimaux, among which are piccaninny, a child-canoe, a boat, &c.; and he has set the people themselves right as to the true manner of writing and pronouncing their name, which, it appears, is Uskee. From Uskee comes (we know not how) yak, and from yak, yankee;-of doodle Mr. O'Reilly says nothing. His most surprising discovery, however, is that of the derivation of the word Uskee itself, with which we should have favoured our readers, had not the author, unfortunately for his literary fame,' contrived, in imitation of his betters, to mix up so much filth and obscenity with his speculations as to render it quite unfit for the public eye

or ear.

[ocr errors]

We shall not trouble our readers with all the instances in which we have caught our learned author tripping, though, for the sake of doing justice to our own character for sagacity, we are under the necessity of noticing a few of them. Thus we apprehend there is a trifling mistake in the information now first communicated to the world, that Columbus came to Britain,' and that he was refused protection,' (Introduction, p. 10); that two noble Venetians, following his example, obtained a ship in Ireland, and sailed to West Friesland in 1380,' not many years after he, whose example they followed, was born. But though they got their ship in Ireland, and though Ireland traded with West Friezeland, the Irish, it seems, know nothing of the matter, and for this plain reason, because Queen Elizabeth deprived them of their records. (p. 10.) Still more unluckily for the Irish, this extensive island, peopled with polished inhabitants dwelling in a hundred towns, was, shortly after its discovery, suddenly overwhelmed in the ocean, and disappeared with every living creature on its surface,' (p. 10)-those beneath its surface, we take for granted, floated off in safety. It was situated, we are informed, in the fifty-eighth degree, between Ice

land and Greenland,' (p. 11.) both of which, of course, must then have extended, at least, as far south as that parallel, though they have since receded towards the North Pole. That there was a West Friezeland Mr. O'Reilly assures us is by no means doubtful; that it was not the Greenland of late note' is equally certain; and that it is now named the Sunken Land of Buss cannot be called in question:-yet in the very next page he says: Quære? May not this land of Buss, so sunken, bear some probable reference to the Old or Lost Greenland, or the Atlantis of the Greek writers? It would not be easy to disprove this.' (p. 12.) We will not contest the point with the learned author, especially as, after all, this island, with its hundred cities, which was metamosphosed from West Friezeland to Buss, from Buss to West Greenland, and from West Greenland to the 'Atlantis of the Greek writers,' turns out to be neither more nor less than the 'famed Ultima Thule of the ancients!" and as whole valleys of dreadful soundings, and peaks of tremendous and destructive contact, buried in the ocean water, forbid an exact inquiry regarding its actual position.' (p. 12.)

But if Mr. O'Reilly has perplexed us a little with this multinominal country, in return, he has set us at ease with regard to Spitzbergen, which we had supposed to be a cluster of islands, but which he has ascertained, from his two months cruise in Davis's Strait, 'to be one island.' (p. 47). We are moreover instructed that 'this one island (Spitzbergen) is utterly uninhabitable in the winter months,' and, finally, that the attempt has never yet been made.' Will not the Dutch and the Russians take shame to themselves for publishing in the face of the world, that their people have frequently wintered there! We are also informed that the bergy fragments' from the 'icy continent' seldom pass the latitude of Statenhoek before they become finally 'dissolved;' of course, the accounts of ice-islands seen in the Atlantic are false. And by way of further consolation, it is added, that the icy continent itself must finally disappear, as the melted snow has eaten deep and tremendous chasms into its sides.

One word more-We are not much in the habit of deciding on the price of books, considering that as not within the critic's province; yet when, as on the present occasion, the enormous sum of fifty shillings is charged for a very thin quarto, we cannot but think it fair that the public should be apprized of what it is composed.It is this consideration alone which has led us to waste a word on a composition so utterly worthless as the volume before us.

ART. IX.-Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto IV. By Lord
Byron. 1818.

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been-
A sound which makes us linger;-yet-farewell!
Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
A thought which once was his, if on ye swell
A single recollection, not in vain

He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell;
Farewell! with him alone may rest the pain,

If such there were-with you, the moral of his strain !'

THIS solemn valediction, the concluding stanza of Lord Byron's poem, forms at once a natural and an impressive motto to our essay. There are few things,' says the moralist, 'not purely evil, of which we can say, without some emotion of uneasiness, this is the last. Those who could never agree together shed tears when mutual discontent has determined them to final separation, and of a place that has been frequently visited, though without pleasure, the last look is taken with heaviness of heart.' When we resume, therefore, our task of criticism, and are aware that we are exerting it for the last time upon this extraordinary work, we feel no small share of reluctance to part with the Pilgrim, whose wanderings have so often beguiled our labours, and diversified our pages. We part from Childe Harold' as from the pleasant and gifted companion of an interesting tour, whose occasional waywardness, obstinacy and caprice are forgotten in the depth of thought with which he commented upon subjects of interest as they passed before us, and in the brilliancy with which he coloured such scenery as addressed itself to the imagination. His faults, if we at all remember them, are recollected only with pity, as affecting himself indeed, but no longer a concern of ours:-his merits acquire double value in our eyes when we call to mind that we may perhaps never more profit by them. The scallop-shell and staff are now laid aside, the pilgrimage is accomplished, and Lord Byron, in his assumed character, is no longer to delight us with the display of his wondrous talents, or provoke us by the use he sometimes condescends to make of them, -an use which at times has reminded us of his own powerful simile, 'It was as is a new-dug grave,

Closing o'er one we sought to save.'

Before we part, however, we feel ourselves impelled to resume a consideration of his Pilgrimage,' not as consisting of detached accounts of foreign scenery and of the emotions suggested by them, but as a whole poem, written in the same general spirit. and pervaded by the same cast of poetry. In doing this, we are con

« FöregåendeFortsätt »