Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
Mr Albert Smith's name, well known within sound of Bow-bells, is
far from unfamiliar to a large circle of dwellers without that
populous circumference. We cannot affirm that we have read all his
numerous works, but with some of them we are acquainted, and we
are disposed to think him one of the most amiable and praiseworthy
of the school of popular humorists to which he belongs. His jokes
are invariably good-humoured and inoffensive--without being on
that account deficient in point. He does not wrap radicalism up in
fun, as cunning grandmothers envelop sickly drugs with marmalade;
nor has his flow of gaiety a sour and mischievous under-current.
Neither does he belong to the gang of facetious philanthropists
whose sympathies are so exclusively granted to the indigent and
miserable, that they have nothing left but gall and bitterness for
those of their fellow-creatures who wear a decent coat, and have
the price of a dinner in its pocket. A gentleman of most versatile
ability, he is by turns dramatist, journalist, essayist, naturalist,
novelist, correspondent of a London paper, critic of the ballet,
a writer of songs and a manufacturer of burlesque. Such a host of
occupations naturally entails the necessity of a little relaxation;
and accordingly, in the summer of last year, Mr Smith laid down
his pen, shook the sawdust from his buskins, and started for the
Mediterranean. As far as Malta we have not ascertained how it fared
with him, but of his subsequent proceedings he has informed us in a
volume which we had little idea of reviewing when first we learned
its expected appearance, but whose perusal has convinced us that it
deserves such brief notice as the crowded state of our pages in these
busy days will permit us to bestow upon it. We have already implied
our opinion that it takes a skilful hand to write an amusing book
on so hackneyed a text as a visit to Constantinople. Mr Smith has
surmounted the difficulty in an easy and natural manner; and, whilst
telling things just as they appeared to him, without affectation
or adornment, he has contrived to give an agreeable freshness and
originality to a subject which we really deemed threadbare and
exhausted.
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