turned a deaf ear to the just claims of their servants. The chief of the remaining sources of dissatisfaction are:-The low rates of pay and allowances. The slowness of promotion among those who have reached the grade of Surgeon. The limitation of the powers of the Medical Board, and the hesitation which Government displays in granting pensions by rank to their Medical Officers. The latter subject, being at present in agitation, we shall quote a passage from an application by Dr. Burnes, to the late Court of Proprietors, as setting forth the wishes of the service. In 1796, when the Indian army was assuming the important character it now possesses, the Medical Department was officially declared by the Court of Directors to be an integral portion of it. Liable to the same dangers, and to more than the same fatigues and exposures, the right of its members to rank, quarters, pay, and pension, relatively with military officers, was freely and fairly conceded. The same just principle was again enunciated in the Court's despatch of the 5th February, 1823, wherein it was unequivocally expressed that no distinction should exist betwixt the military and medical branches, but that the one should enjoy proportionate advantages in common with the other. And so, for forty years, the united departments proceeded pari pasu, the officers of each retiring on the pension of the grade which they had respectively attained. In 1838, however, the Home Government granted to the military officers pensions by length of service, as well as by rank, giving them an option to choose between the two, but without including their medical brethren in the boon, and when the latter prayed for a similar favour, they, strange to say, granted the pension by service, but withdrew that by rank; thus drawing a marked distinction between the departments, rendered more galling by the fact that the avowed object, as respected the military, was a gracious intention to raise, so far as pension could, the unfortunate in promotion, to a level with the fortunate, while the manifest design, in regard to the medical service, was to bring down the lucky to the standard of the unlucky; or in other words, because one branch of it had been slow and supine in its rise, another, which had mounted the ladder with an active step, was also to be brought down to, and retained at, zero. Could any legislation be more mistaken, or disheartening? But the singular anomaly did not end here. In every other case, where innovations, injurious to individuals, had been introduced, they were only to affect new comers, and not those in the service. Take, for instance, the new rules as to the pensions for chaplains, dated August 31, 1836, those for veterinary surgeons, dated May 2, 1851, by both of which it was clearly defined that present members were not to suffer and again, those promulgated in the present year for chaplains, prolonging their pension period from fifteen to seventeen years, but guarding religiously the interests of actual incumbents. While strict justice was thus being administered to other departments, the medical service was told that, for ten years, from July 1842, its Members might retire either under the old or new rules; but that in July, 1852, the latter were to become absolute. This narrow concession might satisfy the seniors to the change, but its practical effort was, by a stroke of power, to alter arbitrarily the conditions on which several hundreds of valuable public servants had accepted the employ of Government, men who, without any disparage ment to the ecclesiastical and veterinary departments, had done their duty as well as they, and were as much entitled to the consideration of their masters. Doubtless, most of these draw-backs will undergo mitigation in due process of time. Long ago, even when laboring under many serious disadvantages from which they are now entirely freed, the generality of Surgeons in India never failed to regard and to boast of their service, as by many degrees the best and the most liberal that has ever been open to the members of the profession. The Medical Officer of the East India Company is exempt from many of the greatest ills that beset the career of his professional brethern at home. While he lives, fair competency is assured to him in return for a fair amount of daily toil; and his thoughts of the future are not embittered by a prospect of over-wrought or necessitous old age, or by the reflection that those who are dearest to him will lose all support at his death. Well-esteemed and attentively listened to by the profession at home, with a countless number of hitherto almost untrodden tracks of scientific enquiry open before them, in the scene of their labours, with the certainty of full encouragement from Government in the pursuit of their investigations, and with a fair probability that any success which they may achieve will be duly appreciated, for we could not point to a single Medical Officer in the service who can justly complain that, in his case, unusual talent, industry or merit has been long and entirely neglected-we cannot but believe that, with increased activity in working out the hidden treasures of Eastern pathology, and therapeutics, and in the encouragement of closer professional union among themselves, by the establishment of Medical Societies in correspondence with the learned bodies of Europe and America, the profession in India might readily achieve a degree of appreciation and influence, which would render them the most fortunate class of physicians even known, since the good old times of scarlet roquelaures and gold-headed canes. THE CALCUTTA REVIEW. ART. I-Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 2 Vols., London, 1853.-(A Romance of the Ganges, &c.) WE entertain a feeling of regard for all the minor poets of the present century, a feeling of regard that borders upon love. We do not wish our readers to suppose, from this confession, that we are partial to the innumerable scribblers of verses for magazines and newspapers. But we do entertain a feeling of great regard, bordering indeed upon love, for those poets, who, having the genuine afflatus from above, are yet unable, and will always be unable, from a variety of causes, to make any impression on the public mind. Alford, Strong, Trench, Elton, &c., &c., their very names are music to our ears. It may be that the fire which burns in their hearts, hath neither sufficient heat nor lustre to attract a crowd, but the flame is real, and not a mere reflexion. We do not know them personally, but we can conceive to ourselves the purity and peace in which the days of men, who are able to think and feel like them, must glide away: in the world, but apart from it: their hearts like temples in the suburbs of mighty cities, where noise cannot penetrate, and nothing is heard, but the rustle of leaves, or the gentle murmur of waters, or haply, a human voice in prayer! Feeding all longings that aspire, like incense, heavenward." What, if noisier men get more praise? What, if the public taste be against them and their pursuits? What, if the world neglect them? There is a music in their souls which compensates for all. แ at once. If any reader wish to know the names of all the minor poets, to whom our observations refer, we must tell him that we cannot even trust our memory to name them all Of course, we remember them, the moment we see their books, but then to have a ready catalogue of them on one's tongue, that is a different matter altogether, and we fairly confess we are not equal to the task! We can give the reader, instead of the names, a pretty sure test, by which K K he may find out, whether any man that has published a book of verses comes under our category of minor poets, and is entitled to regard and love. The test is simple. Let the reader ascertain first, whether the man is a Christian, not ostensively, but in heart. If he is, well and good. If he is not, he may be rejected at once. Let him next ascertain whether he prefers the school of Byron, or the school of Wordsworth. If he prefers the former, and has a dislike for the latter, he can be rejected at once; if, on the other hand, he likes Byron, but prefers Wordsworth, well and good, he may be put to a third and final trial. Let the reader glance over his volume, and see whether the man writes for effect. If he does, he fails at the eleventh hour. A man who is blind to the poetry of the Christian religion, prefers Byron to Wordsworth, and writes for effect, can seldom have a body of thought in his verses; generally speaking, he must rant, and if there is any good in him, he is much more likely to obtain popularity, than to blossom in the shade. He can rarely indeed be a minor poet, that is, a genuine poet, whom the world does not admire. We do not say that our test is infallible, but let the reader try it on a dozen of the volumes on his table, and say if it is not a pretty fair one. Confessing to such a love of the minor poets, it would be absurd for us to deny that we entertain as great a regard, or greater, for the poetesses, several of whom have the peculiar flame of genius to which we have before made reference, although in none burns it with that volcanic, or calm but overpowering brilliance, which attracts and gratifies the multitude. We do not of course like every blue-stocking that writes verses; no, indeed, for we know some to be insufferable bores, and Mr. Thackeray, in Pendennis, has most satisfactorily demonstrated, in the character of Miss Blanche Amory, how a lady may write poetry, and be neither deserving of admiration nor love; -but we like the generality even of those ladies who write on such subjects as Spring,-Winter,-To a Violet-To a Child sleeping-Morning,-Evening, &c., &c., in the trumpery annuals. They may not leave great names behind them, or be looked upon with reverence by future generations; but their pursuits are gentle and harmless, and their hearts generally are replete with the finest feelings of our nature. If they are not great poetesses, they, at all events, know how to appreciate great poetry; and that necessarily makes them somewhat superior to the common run of women. It cannot be denied that there are no poetesses in the English language, fit to take positions beside the highest poets, beside Shakespeare, or Spenser, or Milton; but then, there are poetesses fit to take places beside the highest of the second class or order of poets. The women have labored under a disadvantage. In their education the ornamental accomplishments have always occupied a disproportionate share of attention. When we take into consideration the comparatively short period during which the intellectual education of women has been considered as necessary as that of men, and the very large number of excellent poetesses that have appeared in it, we have every reason to suppose, that we have had no great poetesses,because the women have not had fair play, and not because they are in any way our inferiors in intellect; and we have every reason to hope, that great female poets will appear in time. Our fathers could show very few poetesses, even ordinary versetaggers, we can show many. Our chances of a great poetess, therefore, are more favourable. Who are the female poets of Shakespeare's time? Our readers will hardly be able to name one. Lady Jane Grey, though a great scholar, never wrote poetry. Mary of Scotland wrote poetry, but very little better than our Jane Actons and Eliza Cooks. Mrs. Phillips, the matchless Orinda, wrote far better indeed, but how many can we name to eclipse her-Hemans and Landon, Bowles and Howitt, Norton and Baillie. Yet late in the day as our women have taken the field, they have exercised no inconsiderable influence upon English poetical literature. A softening, healing, purifying element has been introduced through their instrumentality in a body which had become offensive and corrupt ever since the time of Charles II., and which, without their interference, would probably have advanced (in spite of some glorious examples) from one stage to another, of hopeless putrefaction, till the very name of poetry stank in our nostrils. When we remember that such men as Butler could not wholly resist the "infection," and that three or four only soared above the awful miasma, we feel that we owe our women-poets a debt of gratitude which nothing can ever repay. Nor is that feeling any wise diminished, when we contrast our literature with that of other nations-especially of nations where the female influence is not felt. When we contrast English poetical literature, with the poetical literature of India for instance, are we not startled at the gulf that lies between, and do not we feel, as if in one case, we had reached some hill or lofty eminence, where the wind blew fresh and vigorous, and in another some marsh or fen,-picturesque indeed, but where the breeze wafted on its. pinions scarcely any thing but disease and death? Is it diffi |
