ESTATE OF ALEXANDER AND CO.

TO THE EDITOR.

SIR:-Had your March correspondent, who signs himself "A Creditor," been as anxious to have ascertained the truth respecting the estate of Messrs. Alexander and Co., as he is ready to retail idle rumours and to make uujust insinuations, he would have put aside his mask and have applied to me openly for any information in my power to give on the points to which he alludes. As he has not done so, I am not called upon, as far as he and I are concerned, to pay the slightest attention to his letter; but I am bound, in justice towards the gentlemen who came forward so readily to sign my certificate, to rescue them from the imputation, that they were influenced, in this act, honourable to both parties, by no higher consideration than the amount of a dividend, which, be it more or be it less, was and is entirely beyond my control.

The imputation appears to be founded on two assertions:

1st. That" the Creditors, at the meeting on the 18th of July last, were not apprised that the property exhibited in the balance-sheet, and valued at £618,000, was mortgaged;" and,

2dly. That "I had stated, the creditors would receive a dividend of ten shillings in the pound," as if from my own knowledge.

In regard to the first charge, your correspondent has only to refer to the balance-sheet itself, filed in the Bankruptcy Court. That balance-sheet was copied, as far as the difference of forms would admit, from the statements published officially in Calcutta, at the time of the failure (I left India myself so far back as August 1830); and to it, to prevent all doubts in regard to the sources of my information, I added this memorandum :

"The above balance-sheet corresponds, as nearly as possible, with the statements laid before a meeting of the creditors of Messrs. Alexander and Co. on the 2d of January, and with the schedule delivered to and filed in the Insolvent Court of Calcutta, by Messrs. Hurry and Burkinyoung, the assignees, on the 15th of January 1833."

The schedule, after setting forth the description and estimated value of the assets, upon which was founded the calculation of a dividend of eight annas in the rupee, contains the following item :

Deduct difference between dividend and full payment of

claims covered by security ...

£210,000

showing that provision would have to be made for the redemption of property to the extent of £420,000. And the report of the committee of creditors in Calcutta, (which, by the way, was inserted in your June number, six weeks before the meeting of creditors in London, and could scarcely have escaped the notice of your correspondent, who is doubtless also " a constant reader") contains these paragraphs:

"That, for the most part, the tangible assets belonging to the firm, existing on the books of the concern, such as houses, indigo-factories, government and other promissory notes, have been pledged and anticipated, the firm having, in its difficulties, borrowed money on the security of the same to carry on its business; and that, from the inquiries made and information received by them from the partners of the late firm, of the unincumbered assets of the firm, the proportion, of which the immediate realization could

be relied on, is too small to justify any hope of early distribution to the creditors.

"The indigo-factories, and the real property generally of the firm, have been, the committee are informed, mortgaged for a sum considerably under what the property is worth, even during the depressed state of things for the last three years. If that property were now brought into the market, it would not bring two anuas in the rupee of its real value, even if it could be disposed of at all."

In regard to the second charge, I unequivocally deny having, on my own authority, stated one single word as to the probable amount of dividend. I possessed no direct knowledge, and could only refer inquirers to the certificate filed by the assignees, in conformity with the 23d clause of the 9th Geo. IV., and to the opinions of the committee, who "observe that a most important consideration is, what is the present value of the assets of the late firm? The assessed appreciation of the whole is doubtless a difficult task, requiring time and skill to accomplish. In the mean time, from the inquiries which they have been able to make, they would say, that about 60 per cent. is not too large a deduction to be made. This would give 196 lacs of assets to meet 344 lacs of claims;" or, after full payment of claims covered by security, about eight annas in the rupee.

From private letters, it was impossible to arrive at any conclusion, so much did they vary, with the sanguine or desponding temperaments of the writers, some sinking to one shilling, others soaring to fifteen shillings in the pound.

With your correspondent's surmises and "on dits," on the dangers and disadvantages of carrying on the factories, I have no quarrel; but it would, perhaps, have been more candid in him to have given us some of the latter on the favourable side; such, for instance, as "the realization of a profit of £50,000 or £60,000, the late season;" or that " unmortgaged property to the value of £80,000 or £100,000 was on hand unsold, and expecting a better market;"-or the expectation "that the whole of the mortgaged property, with the exception of about sixteen or seventeen lacs, would be restored to the estate at the conclusion of the present season:"-though I am far from asserting these are more worthy of credit than his own.

He is of opinion, also, that the house should have stopped sooner; and, judging by the event, it would perhaps have been the wisest course; but, at the time, it is not so easy to decide. The members of the firm were as much interested, if not more so, than any body else, in doing whatever seemed best for the general interest, and unquestionably hoped their struggle might have terminated successfully. If, however, they have erred in judgment, they have erred on high authority. In the Minutes of Evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons on the Bank Charter, it was stated by more than one Director, that, in the panic of 1825, they were prepared "to pay their notes to the last farthing;" and it can scarcely, I think, be seriously contended that the persons presenting their notes, after the last farthing was gone, could have reasonably complained that "more fortunate," or as "A Creditor" adds, more "favoured," holders were before them.

London, 24th March 1834.

Your obedient servant,

T. BRACKEN.

MR. WILLMOTT'S LIVES OF SACRED POETS.

"WE live in times of transition, when old feelings are passing away; ancient institutions crumbling into dust. The age of romance has vanished; the age of utility has arisen in its place. Few amongst us have now the privilege of contemplating the face of poetry in the still air of uninterrupted studies on every side we are saluted with the Io! of some new triumph of science and utility." Many, like Mr. Willmott, will survey the revolution, commemorated in this extract from his elegantly-written preface, with a sentiment of regret, and would, without offering any meditated affront to the dignity of utilitarianism, gladly recall the days when "the presence of the sacred muse was revealed in the common paths of human life, by the tranquillity and ease which were diffused around her."

In times so little propitious to poetry as these "evil days," when we are scornfully asked, what have poets done to benefit mankind? it appears a hardy and desperate undertaking to challenge public attention to our early sacred poets, whose works have been so long shamefully flung aside as 66 coarse dunghill weeds," and whose names are often used to invite a sneer or to barb a satire. Some degree of praise is fairly due to an author who thus gallantly enters upon what may be termed a forlorn hope; but Mr. Willmott's pretensions stand upon higher ground; for, in this volume, he has displayed a diligence of research, a soundness of criticism, a purity of style, and a perception of the genuine traits of poetry, which eminently qualify him to shine in a province of literature, where the fame of Johnson has deterred many from seeking distinction.

The poets who form the chief objects in the very pleasing picture which Mr. Willmott has traced, are Giles Fletcher, the author of Christ's Victorie, "one of the finest religious poems to which the early part of the seventeenth century gave birth;" the eccentric, unfortunate, and imprudent George Wither; the well-known Francis Quarles, so contemptuously and unjustly degraded by Pope; the pious and amiable George Herbert; and Richard Crashaw, from whose "dregs," as Warton calls them, Pope has, indeed, collected so much gold. In his account of the lives and the labours of these authors, as well as in his introduction, Mr. Willmott has interwoven biographical and critical notices of others of less reputation, but who do not deserve to be consigned to the oblivion into which they were fast sinking: amongst these are Drummond of Hawthornden, Herrick, Henry More, and Flatman.

Various causes have concurred to perpetuate the neglect from which the genius and undoubted merit of many of our early minor poets have not been sufficient to rescue them. They wrote when our language had hardly emerged from rudeness, and when the taste of the age ran strongly in favour of the puerile conceits, ingenious but strained, unnatural metaphors, and

* Lives of Sacred Poets; containing a Biographical and Critical View of English Sacred Poetry during the Reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles the First. By ROBERT ARIS WILLMOTT, Esq., of Trin. Coll., Cambridge. Published under the direction of the Committee of General Literature and Education, appointed by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. London, 1834. Parker.

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mere verbal dexterity, which, as Wither says, serve but for witty men to show tricks one to another." When they wrote, the most popular passages of these authors were probably those most shocking to the taste of the present age; on the other hand, where they ceased to goad their jaded ingenuity, and expressed natural thoughts in natural language, they were perhaps esteemed flat and insipid. Barnabe Barnes, a poet in Mr. Willmott's collection, "upon whom the flattery of friendship bestowed the appellation of Petrarch's scholar," and who, in one of his sonnets, expresses the earnestness of his devotion thus,

On my soul's knees I lift my spirit's palms;

could, at other times, write in the following easy, natural, and poetic strain:
Ah! sweet Content, where is thy mild abode?
Is it with shepherds and light-hearted swains,
Which sing upon the downs and pipe abroad,

Tending their flocks and calling unto plains?

Ah! sweet Content, where dost thou safely rest?
In heaven with angels which the praises sing
Of Him that made and rules at his behest

The minds and parts of every living thing?

Ah! sweet Content, where doth thine harbour hold?
Is it in churches, with religious men,

Which praise the gods with prayers manifold,

And in their studies meditate it then?
Whether thou dost in heaven or earth appear,

Be where thou wilt, thou wilt not find it here.

The success, which sometimes attended the painful efforts of these poets, in their unnatural attempts to outdo nature, occasionally blinds us to the deformity of the vice. The following image, in some verses of Giles Fletcher, on the "velvet-headed violets," is so striking and beautiful, that we almost forget that it is, after all, a conceit

So let the silver dew but lightly lie,

Like little watery worlds, within your azure sky!

Mr. Willmott has not commended beyond its deserts the great poem of this author, Christ's Victorie, which abounds with passages displaying much sublimity and force of imagery, alternately reminding us strongly of the Paradise Lost and the Faery Queen. Fletcher died before the publication of the former poem; the Faery Queen appeared in 1590, and the first edition of Christ's Victorie in 1610.

The most copious and the most interesting of these biographies is that of George Wither, whose singular history Mr. Willmott has traced with great diligence, and whose character he has delineated with a firm and steady pencil, without exaggerating or making too prominent its virtues or its weaknesses. Throughout the volume, indeed, there reigns a tone of charitable and kindly feeling, which by no means impairs the effect of the author's criticism.

Wither, though a puritan, was a rational and an honest one; that is, he had no crooked designs in his puritanism. He says, "I am not for or against

the Presbyterians, Independents, king, parliament, members, or people, more or less than in my judgment may conduct to the wrong or the right way,—from or toward the truth of God." He desired a reformation, not an extirpation, of the royal power; he drew up a petition against the execution of the king, but could not find a member bold enough to present it; and in the zenith of Cromwell's power, he showed himself perfectly independent of his smiles or frowns. As a politician, Mr. Willmott remarks, "he was weak and inconsistent; a reed shaken by every wind." He, however, paid dearly for his vacillations, having sacrificed a good estate for no return but a series of persecutions, only exceeded by those of De Foe. As an author, and especially as a poet,-in which latter capacity the public have been the better provided with means of judging since the publication of some of his pieces by Sir Egerton Brydges, he is not likely to rank high. His multifarious productions are tedious, prosaic, and so overloaded with base matter, that the gold will scarcely repay the toil of digging and refining. He has the merit, however, of writing in a simple and easy style, having been an avowed enemy to "verbal conceits;" and there are passages, here and there, in his works, which, though they will not leaven the entire lump, still suffice to vindicate Wither's claim to the title of poet. The devout or rather enthusiastic spirit, which breathes through the poems of George Herbert,—the "head-work and heart-work," as Baxter expresses it, though, perhaps, the chief ground of his popularity in his own day, very much restricted it in after times. Of his Temple, published in 1633, it has been said, though with some exaggeration and injustice, that it is "a compound of enthusiasm without sublimity, and conceit without. ingenuity or imagination." Mr. Willmott acknowledges that "if Herbert had been less enthusiastic in his devotional feelings, his poems would have been more generally popular;" and the reader will find his conceits plentiful, and not of a very striking character.

The poems of Richard Crashaw, who is characterized, by no less a penthan Cowley's, as

Poet and saint, to whom alone are given,

The two most sacred names of earth and heaven;

and which Pope says he read "twice or thrice," and found "may just deserve reading," are perhaps better known at the present day than the works of any writer in the volume before us, except those of Sternhold and Hopkins. He is classed amongst the metaphysical poets unjustly; his pieces are freer from conceits than those of his contemporaries, exhibiting a sufficient number only (and those of the better sort) to keep them in decent conformity with the fashion. His paraphrase of the Dies Ira has been admired, praised, and plundered: it is no slight tribute to the merit of Crashaw, that his works have been (stealthily) imitated as frequently as those of classical authors.

Our recommendation of Mr. Willmott's volume is given with confidence; for we are convinced that no reader of taste will rise from its perusal with any other sentiment than that of satisfaction.

Asiat. Jour.N.S.VOL.14.No.53.

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