A DASH AT A CONVOY.
It was the second night after our brush with the corvette, when a party, composed of Mr. St. Clair, his niece and daughter, together with several of the officers, stood at the side of the ship. It was a lovely evening. The moon was high in heaven, sailing on in cloudless splendor; her silvery light tipping the tops of the billows, and stretching in a long line of effulgence across the waters. A gentle breeze was singing, with a clear musical intonation, among the thousand tiny threads of the rigging. The water rippled pleasantly against the sides of the ship. Not far off lay a small rakish schooner, from which the sound of a bugle, borne gently on the night air, floated in delicious melody to our ears. The decks were noiseless. The quiet moon seemed as if, by some magic spell, she had hushed the deep into silence, for scarcely a sound rose up from the heaving waves, which, glittering now in the wake of the moon, and now sinking into sudden shadow, stretched away in the distance until they faded into the dim mystic haze of the distant seaboard. The whole scene was like a vision of romance.
The group which I have mentioned stood at the gangway of the ship. A boat was rocking gently below. The passengers, whom we had rescued from the brig, were about transferring themselves to the schooner lying-to a short distance off, which we had spoken about an hour before, and which proved to be a small privateer bound in for Newport. As we were off Block Island, and the run would consequently be a short one, Mr. St. Clair had resolved to avail himself of this opportunity to place his daughter and niece safely on shore. The party were now about to embark.
“I shall never forget your kindness,” said Mr. St. Clair, addressing the captain, “and I am sure that my daughter and niece will give you their especial prayers, as the best return they can make for the obligations they owe you. And as for my friend, Mr. Cavendish—I hardly know how to express my thanks. You will come and see us,” he continued, turning frankly to me, and taking both my hands, “Pomfret Hall will always open its doors gladly to welcome the preserver of its owner.”
I promised that I would not forget it, and turned away to hide the emotion occasioned by the kind tone of Mr. St. Clair. As I moved away my eyes fell on Annette. Her gaze was fixed on me with an expression I shall never forget, but which I would have given the world to have been able to interpret. There was an expression of the deepest interest in that look, and the eyes, I fancied, were partially humid. As soon as she caught my gaze, she blushed deeply, and looked down. What meant that earnest gaze—this sudden embarrassment? Did she then really love me? My heart beat fast, my brain fairly swam around, my emotion, for an instant, almost overpowered me. I could, if no one had been present, have rushed to her feet and told my suit. But a moment’s reflection changed the current of my thoughts. Perhaps she had noticed my feelings while her father had been speaking. If so, her subsequent emotion arose from being detected in observing me. I ran over everything which had happened since she had been on board, and could find nothing corroborating, directly, the idea that she loved me. Her manner had always been frank and kind; but what had she said or done to give me hope? As these thoughts rushed through my mind my towering hopes fell. The revulsion was extreme. I despaired now as much as I had exulted but a moment before. I was about to turn gloomily away, when the voice of Isabel called me. I looked up. She was beckoning me gayly toward her as she leaned on Annette’s arm.
“Why, I declare, Mr. Cavendish,” she said laughingly, “you seem to be determined to leave us depart without even saying ‘adieu’—a pretty gallant you are, to be sure! Here is Annette really displeased at your coldness.”
A look of silent reproach was the only reply of her cousin, who dared not raise her eyes to mine. With the vacillation of a lover my sentiments again underwent a change. Had Annette really been wondering at my coldness? How unjust then had been my suspicions. I advanced eagerly to her side. Yet when I had done so I knew not what to say. Isabel seemed not only to see my embarrassment but to enjoy it. She continued gayly—
“There, now, do your devoir like a gallant knight and soldier—coz, have you no glove or other favor for him to wear on his bosom in battle? Ah! me, the days of courtesy and chivalry have gone forever. But there I see uncle ordering down my package, I must see that he does not let it drop clumsily over-board,” and she tripped laughingly away.
Left almost tête-à-tête with Annette—for every eye was that moment turned to the gangway where some of the passengers were already embarking, I yet felt unable to avail myself of an opportunity for which I had longed. A single word would decide my fate, and yet that word I could not pronounce. My boldness had all disappeared, and I stood before that fair girl equally agitated with herself. At length I looked up. She stole a furtive glance at me as I did so, and blushed again to the very brow. I took her hand, it was not withdrawn. Words of fire were already on my lips when her father turned toward us, saying—
“Annie, my love, they wait for you—Mr. Cavendish, a last good-bye”—and as he spoke every eye was turned toward us. The precious moment was past. I could do nothing but lead Annette forward. Yet I ventured to press her hand. My senses deceived me, or it was faintly, though very faintly, returned. I would have given worlds, if I had them, for the delay of a minute, that I might learn my fate from the lips of that fair girl. But it was not to be. We were already in the centre of the group. Mr. St. Clair took his daughter and lifted her into the chair, and in another moment her white dress fluttered in its descent to the boat. My heart died within me. The golden moment had passed, perhaps forever; for when should we meet again? New scenes, new friends would in all probability drive me from Annette’s remembrance before we should next see each other. These thoughts filled my mind as I leaned over the bulwark and waved my hand while the boat put off. Mr. St. Clair stood up in the barge and bowed in return, while I thought I could see, through the shadowy moonlight, the fair hand of Annette returning my parting adieus.
I watched the receding figures until they reached the schooner, and even after they had ascended the deck, and the two vessels had parted each on its own way, I continued gazing on the white dress of Annette until I could no longer detect the faintest shadow of it. When at length it disappeared totally in the distance, I felt a loneliness of the heart, such as no language can express. To a late hour I continued pensively walking the deck, unable to shake off this feeling, and it was only a gay remark of one of my messmates that finally aroused me from my abstraction. I shook off my pensiveness by an effort, laughed gayly in reply, and soon sought my hammock, as my spirits would not permit me much longer to carry on this double game.
For a week we cruized in the track of the homeward bound fleet from the West Indies, but without success. During this time Annette was constantly in my thoughts. Her last look—that gentle pressure of her hand thrilled through every vein, as often as they recurred to me. Never could I forget her—would she continue to think of me?
More than a week had passed, as I have said, since we had parted from the St. Clairs, yet still we had not spoken a sail. At length one day, when I had the morning watch, the lookout hailed from the cross-trees, that a sail was down on the seaboard to leeward. Chase was instantly given to the stranger. The breeze was fresh, and we were in consequence soon close enough to discern the character of our neighbor. She had not from the first appeared to avoid us, and no sooner did we show our colors, than she ran up the ensign of France. We were going on different tacks, and, as we approached, both ships lay-to for a moment’s conversation. The French merchantman was a noble ship, and as she came up gallantly towards us, her long bowsprit sunk far down into the trough of the wave, and then, with a slow swan-like motion she rose on the ensuing swell until her bows were elevated almost clear of the water, while the bright copper dripping with brine glistened gloriously in the sunbeams.
The Frenchman backed his topsails as he drew near, and the two vessels stood head on, while we sent a boat on board. The merchantman proved to be upon her homeward passage, and had consequently no intelligence from Europe to furnish us. But the French skipper told us what was far more interesting to us. He mentioned that he had, but the day before, fallen in with the homeward bound English fleet, from the West Indies, amounting to some sixty sail. The fleet was convoyed by four men-of-war. Our captain, however, resolved to have a dash at the convoy. He conceived the daring project of cutting off a portion of the fleet, under the very batteries of the men-of-war. The French skipper wished us a “bon voyage,” and the two vessels parted company.
We cracked on all sail, during the whole of the day and night. The next morning, at the dawn of day, our lookout descried the English fleet, on our larboard-side. Luckily, we had the weather-gauge. We kept crowding on our canvass, however, during the whole forenoon, and as we gained on the convoy, we saw sail after sail rising in the seaboard, until the whole horizon was dotted with them, and the lookout reported more than fifty, in sight. By this the men-of-war had caught the alarm, and were firing guns to keep their flock around them. The dull sailers, however, fell rapidly behind. This forced one of the English frigates to leave the advance, and run astern of the fleet. During the whole day we kept coquetting to windward of the fleet, but no demonstrations against us were made on the part of the men-of-war.
“A cowardly set, by the Lord Harry,” said our old boatswain, who often beguiled a dull hour with a yarn, “here are we giving them a chance for a fair stand-up fight, and the cowardly lubbers haven’t the pluck to come up and take or give a thrashing. I can’t stand such sneaking scoundrels—by St. George,” and the old fellow energetically squirted a stream of tobacco-juice from his mouth, as if from a force-pump.
“We’ll have a brush with them, nevertheless, Hinton,” said I, “or I know nothing of the captain. He has got his eye on more than one rich prize in that fleet, and depend upon it, he’ll make a dash for it before long.”
“Ay! ay! you’re right,” answered the boatswain “and he’ll do it, too, before two bells have struck in the morning watch.”
The night shut in squally and dark. The fleet was some three miles to leeward, for during the whole day we had carefully maintained the weather gauge. As the darkness increased we lost sight of the enemy’s ships, but their numerous lights glistening like stars along the seaboard, still pointed out to us their position. The wind was uncertain, now coming in fitful puffs, and then blowing steadily for a quarter of an hour, when it would again die away and sweep in squalls across the waste of waters. Scud clouds began to fly across the face of the heavens, obscuring the few stars, and giving a wild and ominous appearance to the firmament. Down to the west the seaboard was covered by a dense bank of clouds, out of which occasionally a flash of lightning would zig-zag, followed by a low hoarse growl of distant thunder. It was evident that a tempest was raging, far down in that quarter. On the opposite horizon, however, the sky was nearly free from clouds, only a few fleecy vapors being discernible in that quarter, through which the bright stars twinkled clear and lustrous. The English fleet lay between these two opposite quarters of the horizon—the right wing of the convoy stretching down almost into the utter darkness in that direction, and the left wing skirting along the horizon to the eastward. Along the whole expanse of seaboard, more than fifty lights were now glittering, like so many fire-flies winging through the gloom along the edge of a forest, on a summer eve. The scene was one of surpassing novelty, and drew forth the admiration even of our veteran tars. Now and then the vapors in the east would clear entirely away, leaving the firmament in that direction, sparkling with thousands of stars; and then again the murky shroud would enclose them in nearly total darkness. Occasionally, as if in contrast to this, a brighter flash of lightning would gleam, or a louder burst of thunder roll up from the dark bank of clouds enclosing the tempest to the westward.
The night had scarcely settled down before the ship’s course was altered and we bore down upon the fleet—taking the precaution, however, to put out all the lights on board except the one at the binnacle. Meantime the men were called to quarters, the tompions of the guns removed, the ammunition served out, pikes, cutlasses and fire arms distributed among the crew, and every preparation made for action. As we drew nearer to the convoy the darkness of the night increased, until, at length, we could see but a few fathoms ahead into the gloom. The eastern firmament now became wholly obscured. Not a star shone on high to guide us on our way. Had it not been for the long line of lights sparkling along the seaboard, betraying the positions occupied by the various vessels in the convoy, we should have possessed no guide to our prey,—and nothing but the confidence felt by the enemy in his superior force could have induced him to continue his lights aboard, when otherwise he might have run a chance of dropping us in the darkness. But he never dreamed of the bold swoop which we projected, into the very midst of his flock. He would as soon have thought of our blockading the Thames, or burning the English fleet at Portsmouth.
The plan of Captain Smythe was indeed a bold one. Bearing right onwards into the very centre of the fleet, he intended to cut off one of the wings from the main body, and then board and take possession of as many of the merchantmen as he could carry in the obscurity. We judged that the men-of-war were in the van, with the exception of a frigate which we had seen before nightfall hovering in the rear of the fleet to cover the lagging merchantmen. This frigate, however, we supposed to be on the extreme right of the enemy. We therefore bore down for the opposite extremity of the fleet.
For more than an hour, while, with every rag of canvass abroad, we were hastening to overtake the enemy, scarcely a word was spoken by the crew,—but each man remained at his station eagerly watching the gradual diminution of the distance betwixt us and the convoy. Indeed silence was, in some measure, necessary to the success of our plot. Even the orders of the officers therefore were given and executed with as little bustle as possible. As the darkness increased we noticed that the lights ahead began to diminish in number, and it was not long before we became satisfied that the foe had at length awoke to the probability of our being in the vicinity. At length scarcely more than half a dozen lights could be seen. These we judged to belong to the men-of-war, being kept aloft for the convoy to steer by.
The difficulty of our enterprise was now redoubled, for, if the darkness should increase, there would be great danger of a collision with one or another of the fleet. This peril, however, we shared in common with the merchantmen composing the convoy. Our only precaution consisted in doubling our look-outs.
Another hour passed, during which we steered by the lights of the men-of-war. By the end of that period we had run, according to our calculation, into the very heart of the fleet, leaving a man-of-war broad on our larboard beam, a mile or two distant. This latter vessel we fancied to be the frigate which had been hovering towards nightfall in the rear of the fleet. Our anxiety now increased. We were surrounded, on every side, by the vessels of the convoy, and the obscurity was so profound that we could not see a pistol shot on any hand. Our progress, meantime, was continued in utter silence. The only sound we heard was the singing of the wind through the rigging, the occasional cheeping of a block, or the rushing of the water along our sides. Suddenly, however, I thought I heard a sound as of the bracing of a yard right over our starboard bow.
“Hist!” I said to the boatswain, who happened that moment to be passing, “hist! do you hear that?”
The old fellow stopped, listened a moment, and then shaking his head, said,
“I hear nothing. What did you hear?”
“Hark! there it goes again,” I said, as the sound of a sail flapping against a mast came distinctly out of the gloom.
“By St. George, you are right,” exclaimed the old water-rat, “ay! ay! young ears are arter-all the sharpest!”
He had scarcely spoken before the tall masts of a ship, like a spectre rising through the night, lifted themselves up out of the obscurity in the direction whence the sound had proceeded, and instantaneously we heard the tramping of many feet on the decks of the stranger, the rapid orders of the officers, the running of ropes, the creaking of yards, and the dull flapping of sails in the wind. At the same time a voice hailed,
“Luff up or you’ll be into us,” and then the same voice spoke as if addressing the helmsman on board the stranger, “up with your helm—around, around with her—my God! we’ll be afoul.”
The consternation of the British skipper was not without cause. No sooner had Capt. Smythe discovered our proximity to the stranger, than he formed the determination of running her aboard, taking her by a sally of our brave fellows, and then, after throwing into her a party sufficiently strong to maintain possession of her, keeping on his way. During the minute therefore that elapsed betwixt the discovery of the merchantman, and the hail of her affrighted skipper, the boarders had been called away and the quartermaster ordered to run us bows on to the quarter of the stranger. Instead of luffing, therefore, we kept straight on in our course, and as a score of lanterns were instantly shown on board both ships, sufficient light was thrown over the scene to guide us in our manœuvre. As the English ship wore around, bringing the wind on her starboard quarter, our helm was jammed to port, and swinging around almost on our heel we shot upon the foe, striking her in the stern galley, which we crushed as we would have crushed an egg-shell. The English ship was heavily loaded, and in consequence our bowsprit ran high above her decks, affording a bridge on which our brave tars might easily pass on board. At the moment we struck, the captain dashed forward, and summoning the boarders to follow him, had leaped, sword in hand, into the centre of the enemy’s crew, before her skipper had ceased giving orders to the perplexed seamen, who were running to and fro on her decks, in the vain hope of preventing any damage resulting to them from this collision, with, as they thought, a sister vessel. The consternation of the master may well be conceived when he found his ship in possession of an enemy. For some minutes he imagined it to be a jest, for he could not conceive how any foe would have the audacity to cut him out from the very heart of the fleet. His rueful countenance when he discovered his error, I shall never forget, nor the bad grace with which he consented to be transferred with a portion of his men to the Aurora. In less than five minutes, however, this necessary precaution had been carried into effect, and a prize-crew left in possession of the merchantman. The officer in command was ordered to haul out of the fleet, and gain a position as speedily as possible to windward. Then the two ships were parted, and we stood away as before on the larboard tack, while the prize braced sharp up, hauled her bowlines, and went off close into the wind’s eye.
“By Jove,” said a reefer, elated with the part he had acted among the boarders, for he had been one of the first to step on the decks of the merchantman, “by Jupiter, but that was neatly done—eh! don’t you think so, Hinton, my old boy?”
“Shut your dead-lights, you young jackanapes,” growled the old boatswain, by no means pleased with such a salutation, “and keep your tongue for cheering against the enemy: you’ll have enough of it to do yet before you turn in. Avast! there! I say,” he continued, perceiving that the youngster was about to interrupt him, “go to your post, or I’ll report you, you young whelp. None of your blarney, as your thick-tongued Irish messmate would say—away with you.”
When Hinton’s ire was up the safest plan was to retreat, for he would brook no retort unless from the captain or lieutenant. Over the young reefers, especially those who were in disfavor with him, he domineered with a rod of iron. The youngster who had forgotten for a moment, in the elation of his first victory, the awe in which he held the boatswain, was recalled by these words to a sense of the authority of the old tar, and he shrunk accordingly away, disdaining to reply.
“Ay! go, you varmint,” chuckled Hinton, as the reefer walked to his post, “and give none of your long shore palaver to a man who had learned before you were born to hold his tongue before an enemy as his first duty. Isn’t it so, Mr. Cavendish?”
I was a great favorite of the old fellow, and always made a point of humoring him, so I nodded an assent to his remark, although I was tempted to ask him how long since he had forgotten this important duty of silence. I restrained, however, my question, and the smile which would fain have preceded it: and listened for several minutes in return for this complaisance to a long philippic on the part of the old fellow, against what he chose to call the almost universal presumption of midshipmen. From this tirade, however, the boatswain condescended to exempt me. How long he would have dilated upon this favorite subject, I know not; but, at this moment, a hail came out of the gloom ahead, and every eye was instantly attracted in the direction from which the voice proceeded.
“Ship ahoy!” shouted a herculean voice, “what craft is that?”
The tone of the speaker betrayed a latent suspicion that all was not right with us. Indeed he must have been so close to us in our late encounter with the merchantman, that he necessarily heard many things to awaken his doubts. As he spoke, too, the tall figure of a heavy craft loomed out from the obscurity, and while we were yet speculating as to the answer the captain would make, a dozen lanterns flashing through as many open port-holes, revealed that our neighbor was a man-of-war.
“What ship is that?” thundered the voice again, “answer, or I’ll fire into you!”
Our dauntless captain waved his hand for the batteries to be unmasked, and springing into the mizzen rigging, while a neighboring battle-lantern now disclosed to the night, flung its light full upon his form, he shouted in an equally stentorian voice—
“This is the Aurora—commissioned by the good commonwealth of——”
“Give it to the canting rebel,” roared the British officer, breaking in on this reply, “fire—for God and St. George—FIRE!”
“Ay! fire my brave boys,” thundered our leader, “one and all, for the old thirteen—FIRE!”
From the moment when the enemy had disclosed his lighted ports, our gallant tars had been waiting, like hounds in the leash, for the signal which was to let them loose upon the foe. The silent gesture of the captain, when he sprung into the mizzen rigging, had been intuitively understood by the crew, and the orders of the proper officers were scarcely waited for, before the ports were opened, the battle lanterns unmasked, the guns run out, and the whole deck changed, as if by magic, from a scene of almost Egyptian darkness to one of comparative light. Nor were the men less ready to discover the moment when to open their fire. The first word of the British officer’s haughty interruption had scarcely been spoken, when the gunners began to pat their pieces and squint knowingly along them, so that, when the command to fire was given, our whole broadside went off at once, like a volcano, and with deadly effect. Every gun had been accurately aimed, every shot was sent crashing into the foe. Not so the enemy. Although the British captain had certainly viewed us with suspicion, his crew had apparently thought us deserving of little caution; and the reply of our leader, and the order of their own to fire, took them, after all, with surprise. Nearly a minute accordingly elapsed before they delivered their broadside, and then it was done hurriedly and with little certainty of aim. The first fire is always more effective than the ensuing six; and the advantage of the surprise was decided; for while we could hear the crashing of timbers, and the shrieks of the wounded, following our discharge, the shot of the enemy passed mostly over our heads, and, in my vicinity, not a man of our crew was killed. One poor fellow, however, fell wounded at the gun next to mine.
“Huzza!” roared Hinton, leaping like a lion to fill the place of the injured man, “they’ve got their grog already. Have at ’em, my brave fellows, again, and revenge your messmate. Never mind, Jack,” he said, turning to the bleeding man, “every one must have a kick sometime in his life, and the sooner its over, my hearty, the better. Bouse her out, shipmates! Huzza for old Nantucket—the varmints have it again on full allowance!”
For ten minutes the fight was maintained on our side without cessation. The enemy, at first, rallied and attempted to return our broadsides promptly, but the injuries she had suffered from our first discharge had disheartened her men, and, when they found the spirit with which we maintained our fire, they soon gave up the contest and deserted their arms. Still, however, the enemy did not strike. One or two of her forward guns were occasionally and suddenly discharged at us, but all systematic resistance had ceased in less than five minutes.
By this time, however, the whole fleet was in an uproar. Lights were dashing in every quarter of the horizon, and, as the darkness had been clearing away since our brush with the merchantman, our lookout aloft could see through the faint, misty distance, more than one vessel bearing down toward us. The majority, however, of the fleet, seemed to be struck with a complete panic, and, like a flock of startled partridges, were hurrying from us in every direction. It soon became apparent that the ships, bearing down upon us, were armed; and before we had been engaged ten minutes with our antagonist, no less than three men-of-war, from as many quarters of the horizon, had opened a concentric fire on us, regardless of the damage they would do their consort. Still, however, unwilling to leave his antagonist without compelling her to strike, our leader maintained his position and poured in a series of rapid broadsides which cut the foe up fearfully. Yet she would not strike. On the other hand, reanimated by the approach of her consorts, her men rallied to her guns and began again to reply to our broadsides. Meanwhile the hostile frigates were coming up to us, hand over hand, increasing the rapidity of their cannonade as the distance betwixt us lessened. Our situation was becoming momentarily more critical. Yet even amid our peril my eye was attracted by the sublimity of the scene.
The night, I have said, had partially cleared away, but the darkness was still sufficiently intense to render the approaching frigates but dimly visible, except when a gush of fire would stream from their ports, lighting up, for the moment, with a ghastly glare, the smoke-encircled hull, the tall masts, and the thousand mazes of the hamper. Often the whole three vessels would discharge their broadsides at once, when it would seem for an instant as if we were girdled by fire. Then, as the smoke settled on their decks, they would disappear wholly from our sight, and only become again distinguishable, when they belched forth their sulphureous flame once more. In the west, the scene was even more magnificent, for in that quarter, was unexpectedly the nearest of the three men-of-war, and as she came up to us close-hauled, she yawed whenever she fired, and then steadily discharged her pieces, doing more damage than all her other consorts. The gallant manner in which she delivered her fire—the measured, distinct booming of her long twenty-fours—and more than all, the inky hue of the sky, in the background, brought out into the boldest relief, by the light of her guns, made up a picture of gloomy grandeur, which the imagination can compare to nothing, except the fitful, ghastly gleams of light shooting across the darkness of that infernal realm, which Dante has painted with his pen of horror. While, however, I was gazing awe-struck, on this scene, I noticed that the dark bank of clouds behind the frigate, was visibly in motion, rolling up towards us. Our superior officer had, perhaps, noticed the same phenomenon, and knowing what it portended, had remained by his antagonist, when otherwise, our only chance of escape would have been in an early flight. Some of the older tars now perceived the approaching tempest, and paused instantaneously from the combat. Indeed, not a moment was to be lost. I had scarcely time to look once more in the direction of the other frigates, and then turn again to the westward, before our antagonist in that quarter, was completely shut in by the squall. The wind had, meantime, died away, leaving us rocking unquietly in the swell. A pause of a minute ensued, a pause of the most breathless suspense. The men had instinctively left their guns, and stood awaiting the directions of their leaders to whom they looked in this emergency. We were happily nearly before the wind, which could now be seen lashing the foam from the billows, and driving down upon us with the speed of a race-horse. Another instant and the squall would be upon us. All this, however, had passed, in less time than is occupied in the relation, for scarcely a minute had elapsed, since I first saw the approaching squall, before Captain Smythe shouted,
“Stand by to clew down—quick there all!”
The command was not an instant too soon. His opening words were heard distinctly in the boding calm that preceded the squall, but the concluding sentence was lost in the hissing and roaring of the hurricane that now swept across our decks. The captain saw that it was useless to attempt to speak in the uproar, and waving his hand for the quartermaster to keep her away, while the men instinctively clewed down the topsail-yards, and hauled out the reef-tackles, he awaited the subsidence of the squall. For five minutes we went skimming before the tempest, like a snow-flake in a storm. On—on—on, we drove, the fine spray hissing past us on the gale, and the shrill scream of the wind through our hamper deafening our ears. Whither we were going, or what perils might meet us in our mad career, we knew not. We were flying helplessly onward, enclosed by the mist, at the mercy of the winds. Even if the intensity of the squall would have allowed us to bring by the wind and reef, prudence would dictate that we should run before the hurricane, as the only chance of escaping from the clutches of our foes. Yet, surrounded as we were by the merchantmen of the fleet, we knew not but the next moment, we might run down some luckless craft, and perhaps by the collision, sink both them and ourselves.
For nearly half an hour we drove thus before the hurricane. More than once we fancied that we heard the shrieks of drowning men, rising high over all the uproar of the tempest, but whether they were in reality the cries of the dying or only the sounds created by an overheated imagination and having no existence except in the brain of the hearer, God only knows! A thousand ships might have sunk within a cable’s length of us, and not a prayer of the sufferers, not a shriek of despair have met our ears. There was a fearfulness in that palpable darkness, which struck the most veteran heart with an awe akin to fear. When men can look abroad and see the real extent of the peril which surrounds them they can dare almost anything; but when surrounded by darkness their imaginations conjure up dangers in every strange intonation of the tempest, in every new outbreak of the surge. They tremble at what they cannot behold; in the language of the scripture “their joints are loosed with fear.”
At length the fury of the squall began to subside, and the dark bank of clouds which had encircled us, undulated, rolled to and fro, and finally flew in ragged vapors away, flitting wildly past the stars that once more twinkled in the sky. As the prospect brightened, we looked eagerly around to see what damage the squall had occasioned. The fleet was scattered hither and thither over the horizon, torn, shattered, dismantled, powerless. Far up in the quarter from whence the hurricane had burst could be faintly seen the body of the convoy; but on every hand around some of the less fortunate ships were discoverable. Whether, however, most of the merchantmen had attempted to lie-to, or whether we had scudded before the gale with a velocity which none could rival, it was evident that we had passed away like a thunderbolt from the rest of the fleet, leaving them at a hopeless distance astern.
Owing to the rapidity with which our canvass had been got in, we suffered no material injury; and, when the gale subsided and the wind came out again from the north, we lost no time in hauling up and getting the weather-gauge of the convoy. The ship was put once more in trim—the crew then turned in, and the watches were left in undisturbed possession of the decks. As I stood at my post and watched the bright stars overhead, shining placidly upon me, or listened to the cry of “All’s well!” passed from lookout to lookout across the deck, I could not help contrasting the peace and silence of the scene with the fearful uproar of the preceding hour.
When morning dawned, not a vestige of the fleet remained on the southern seaboard. Our anxiety was now turned to the fate of the merchantman we had captured and that of the prize-crew we had thrown into her. But toward the afternoon watch, a sail was discovered on the horizon to windward, and when we had approached within a proper distance we recognized our prize. Our joy at rejoining may well be imagined.
The prize proved to be laden with a valuable cargo, and, as this was the first capture of any moment we had made, it raised the spirits of the men in a commensurate degree. The skipper of the merchantman could never comprehend the justice of his capture. Like the generals whom Napoleon has been beating at a later day, he protested that he had been taken against all the rules of war.
After keeping company with us for a few days, the prize hauled up for the coast with the intention of going into Newport. We subsequently learned that she accomplished her aim, but not until she had run the gauntlet of an English fleet. As for ourselves, we stood towards the south on the look out for a new prize.
A LADY HEARD A MINSTREL SING.
BALLAD.
THE POETRY BY T. HAYNES BAYLY, ESQ.
THE MUSIC BY J. P. KNIGHT.
———
Philadelphia: John F. Nunns, 184 Chesnut Street.
———
A Lady heard a Minstrel sing,
One night beneath her bower,
In wrath she cried, “oh! what can bring
A stranger at this hour?”
She clos’d the casement,— veil’d the lamp,
The Minstrel paus’d in sorrow,
Yet said, “tho’ now I must decamp,
I’ll try again to-morrow.”
The minstrel came again next night,
The lady was not sleeping!
She slily (tho’ she veil’d the light)
Was thro’ her casement peeping.
She heard him fondly breathe her name,
Then saw him go with sorrow;
And cried, “I wonder whence he came?
Perhaps he’ll come to-morrow.”
Again she heard the sweet guitar,—
But soon the song was broken:
Tho’ songs are sweet, oh! sweeter far
Are words in kindness spoken:
She loves him for himself alone,
Disguise no more he’ll borrow,
The minstrel’s rank at length is known,—
She’ll grace a court to-morrow.
REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.
Charles O’Malley, The Irish Dragoon. By Harry Lorrequer. With Forty Illustrations by Phiz. Complete in One Volume. Carey & Hart: Philadelphia.
The first point to be observed in the consideration of “Charles O’Malley” is the great popularity of the work. We believe that in this respect it has surpassed even the inimitable compositions of Mr. Dickens. At all events it has met with a most extensive sale; and, although the graver journals have avoided its discussion, the ephemeral press has been nearly if not quite unanimous in its praise. To be sure, the commendation, although unqualified, cannot be said to have abounded in specification, or to have been, in any regard, of a satisfactory character to one seeking precise ideas on the topic of the book’s particular merit. It appears to us, in fact, that the cabalistical words “fun,” “rollicking” and “devil-may-care,” if indeed words they be, have been made to stand in good stead of all critical comment in the case of the work now under review. We first saw these dexterous expressions in a fly-leaf of “Opinions of the Press” appended to the renowned “Harry Lorrequer” by his publisher in Dublin. Thence transmitted, with complacent echo, from critic to critic, through daily, weekly and monthly journals without number, they have come at length to form a pendant and a portion of our author’s celebrity—have come to be regarded as sufficient response to the few ignoramuses who, obstinate as ignorant, and fool-hardy as obstinate, venture to propound a question or two about the true claims of “Harry Lorrequer” or the justice of the pretensions of “Charles O’Malley.”
We shall not insult our readers by supposing any one of them unaware of the fact, that a book may be even exceedingly popular without any legitimate literary merit. This fact can be proven by numerous examples which, now and here, it will be unnecessary and perhaps indecorous to mention. The dogma, then, is absurdly false, that the popularity of a work is primâ facie evidence of its excellence in some respects; that is to say, the dogma is false if we confine the meaning of excellence (as here of course it must be confined) to excellence in a literary sense. The truth is, that the popularity of a book is primâ facie evidence of just the converse of the proposition—it is evidence of the book’s demerit, inasmuch as it shows a “stooping to conquer”—inasmuch as it shows that the author has dealt largely, if not altogether, in matters which are susceptible of appreciation by the mass of mankind—by uneducated thought, by uncultivated taste, by unrefined and unguided passion. So long as the world retains its present point of civilization, so long will it be almost an axiom that no extensively popular book, in the right application of the term, can be a work of high merit, as regards those particulars of the work which are popular. A book may be readily sold, may be universally read, for the sake of some half or two-thirds of its matter, which half or two-thirds may be susceptible of popular appreciation, while the one-half or one-third remaining may be the delight of the highest intellect and genius, and absolute caviare to the rabble. And just as
Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci,
so will the writer of fiction, who looks most sagaciously to his own interest, combine all votes by intermingling with his loftier efforts such amount of less ethereal matter as will give general currency to his composition. And here we shall be pardoned for quoting some observations of the English artist, H. Howard. Speaking of imitation, he says:
The pleasure which results from it, even when employed upon the most ordinary materials, will always render that property of our art the most attractive with the majority, because it may be enjoyed with the least mental exertion. All men are in some degree judges of it. The cobbler in his own line may criticize Apelles; and popular opinions are never to be wholly disregarded concerning that which is addressed to the public—who, to a certain extent, are generally right; although as the language of the refined can never be intelligible to the uneducated, so the higher styles of art can never be acceptable to the multitude. In proportion as a work rises in the scale of intellect, it must necessarily become limited in the number of its admirers. For this reason the judicious artist, even in his loftiest efforts, will endeavor to introduce some of those qualities which are interesting to all, as a passport for those of a more intellectual character.
And these remarks upon painting—remarks which are mere truisms in themselves—embody nearly the whole rationale of the topic now under discussion. It may be added, however, that the skill with which the author addresses the lower taste of the populace, is often a source of pleasure because of admiration, to a taste higher and more refined, and may be made a point of comment and of commendation by the critic.
In our review, last month, of “Barnaby Rudge,” we were prevented, through want of space, from showing how Mr. Dickens had so well succeeded in uniting all suffrages. What we have just said, however, will suffice upon this point. While he has appealed, in innumerable regards, to the most exalted intellect, he has meanwhile invariably touched a certain string whose vibrations are omni-prevalent. We allude to his powers of imitation—that species of imitation to which Mr. Howard has reference—the faithful depicting of what is called still-life, and particularly of character in humble condition. It is his close observation and imitation of nature here which have rendered him popular, while his higher qualities, with the ingenuity evinced in addressing the general taste, have secured him the good word of the informed and intellectual.
But this is an important point upon which we desire to be distinctly understood. We wish here to record our positive dissent (be that dissent worth what it may) from a very usual opinion—the opinion that Mr. Dickens has done justice to his own genius—that any man ever failed to do grievous wrong to his own genius—in appealing to the popular judgment at all. As a matter of pecuniary policy alone, is any such appeal defensible. But we speak, of course, in relation to fame—in regard to that
——spur which the true spirit doth raise
To scorn delight and live laborious days.
That a perfume should be found by any “true spirit” in the incense of mere popular applause, is, to our own apprehension at least, a thing inconceivable, inappreciable,—a paradox which gives the lie unto itself—a mystery more profound than the well of Democritus. Mr. Dickens has no more business with the rabble than a seraph with a chapeau de bras. What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba? What is he to Jacques Bonhomme[[3]] or Jacques Bonhomme to him? The higher genius is a rare gift and divine. Ὡπόλλων ου παντι φαεινεται, ος μιν ιδη, μεγας ουτος—not to all men Apollo shows himself; he is alone great who beholds him.[[4]] And his greatness has its office God-assigned. But that office is not a low communion with low, or even with ordinary intellect. The holy—the electric spark of genius is the medium of intercourse between the noble and more noble mind. For lesser purposes there are humbler agents. There are puppets enough, able enough, willing enough, to perform in literature the little things to which we have had reference. For one Fouqué there are fifty Molières. For one Angelo there are five hundred Jan Steens. For one Dickens there are five million Smolletts, Fieldings, Marryatts, Arthurs, Cocktons, Bogtons and Frogtons.
It is, in brief, the duty of all whom circumstances have led into criticism—it is, at least, a duty from which we individually shall never shrink—to uphold the true dignity of genius, to combat its degradation, to plead for the exercise of its powers in those bright fields which are its legitimate and peculiar province, and which for it alone lie gloriously outspread.
But to return to “Charles O’Malley,” and its popularity. We have endeavored to show that this latter must not be considered in any degree as the measure of its merit, but should rather be understood as indicating a deficiency in this respect, when we bear in mind, as we should do, the highest aims of intellect in fiction. A slight examination of the work, (for in truth it is worth no more,) will sustain us in what we have said. The plot is exceedingly meagre. Charles O’Malley, the hero, is a young orphan Irishman, living in Galway county, Ireland, in the house of his uncle, Godfrey, to whose sadly encumbered estates the youth is heir apparent and presumptive. He becomes enamoured, while on a visit to a neighbor, of Miss Lucy Dashwood, and finds a rival in a Captain Hammersley. Some words carelessly spoken by Lucy, inspire him with a desire for military renown. After sojourning, therefore, for a brief period, at Dublin University, he obtains a commission and proceeds to the Peninsula, with the British army under Wellington. Here he distinguishes himself; is promoted; and meets frequently with Miss Dashwood, whom obstinately, and in spite of the lady’s own acknowledgment of love for himself, he supposes in love with Hammersley. Upon the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo he returns home; finds his uncle, of course, just dead; and sells his commission to disencumber the estate. Presently Napoleon escapes from Elba, and our hero, obtaining a staff appointment under Picton, returns to the Peninsula, is present at Waterloo, (where Hammersley is killed) saves the life of Lucy’s father, for the second time, as he has already twice saved that of Lucy herself; is rewarded by the hand of the latter; and, making his way back to O’Malley Castle, “lives happily all the rest of his days.”
In and about this plot (if such it may be called) there are more absurdities than we have patience to enumerate. The author, or narrator, for example, is supposed to be Harry Lorrequer as far as the end of the preface, which by the way, is one of the best portions of the book. O’Malley then tells his own story. But the publishing office of the “Dublin University Magazine” (in which the narrative originally appeared) having been burned down, there ensues a sad confusion of identity between O’Malley and Lorrequer, so that it is difficult, for the nonce, to say which is which. In the want of copy consequent upon the disaster, James, the novelist, comes in to the relief of Lorrequer, or perhaps of O’Malley, with one of the flattest and most irrelevant of love-tales. Meantime, in the story proper are repetitions without end. We have already said that the hero saves the life of his mistress twice, and of her father twice. But not content with this, he has two mistresses, and saves the life of both, at different periods, in precisely the same manner—that is to say, by causing his horse, in each instance, to perform a Munchausen side-leap, at the moment when a spring forward would have impelled him upon his beloved. And then we have one unending, undeviating succession of junketings, in which “devilled kidneys” are never by any accident found wanting. The unction and pertinacity with which the author discusses what he chooses to denominate “devilled kidneys” are indeed edifying, to say no more. The truth is, that drinking wine, telling anecdotes, and devouring “devilled kidneys” may be considered as the sum total, as the thesis of the book. Never in the whole course of his eventful life, does Mr. O’Malley get “two or three assembled together” without seducing them forthwith to a table, and placing before them a dozen of wine and a dish of “devilled kidneys.” This accomplished, the parties begin what seems to be the business of the author’s existence—the narration of unusually broad tales—like those of the Southdown mutton. And here, in fact, we have the plan of that whole work of which the “United Service Gazette” has been pleased to vow it “would rather be the author than of all the ‘Pickwicks’ and ‘Nicklebys’ in the world”—a sentiment which we really blush to say has been echoed by many respectable members of our own press. The general plot or narrative is a mere thread upon which after-dinner anecdotes, some good, some bad, some utterly worthless, and not one truly original, are strung with about as much method, and about half as much dexterity, as we see ragged urchins employ in stringing the kernels of nuts.
It would, indeed, be difficult to convey to one who has not examined this production for himself, any idea of the exceedingly rough, clumsy, and inartistical manner in which even this bald conception is carried out. The stories are absolutely dragged in by the ears. So far from finding them result naturally or plausibly from the conversation of the interlocutors, even the blindest reader may perceive the author’s struggling and blundering effort to introduce them. It is rendered quite evident that they were originally “on hand,” and that “O’Malley” has been concocted for their introduction. Among other niaïseries we observe the silly trick of whetting appetite by delay. The conversation over the “kidneys” is brought, for example, to such a pass that one of the speakers is called upon for a story, which he forthwith declines for any reason, or for none. At a subsequent “broil” he is again pressed, and again refuses, and it is not until the reader’s patience is fairly exhausted, and he has consigned both the story and its author to Hades, that the gentleman in question is prevailed upon to discourse. The only conceivable result of this fanfarronade is the ruin of the tale when told, through exaggerating anticipation respecting it.
The anecdotes thus narrated being the staple of the book, and the awkward manner of their interlocution having been pointed out, it but remains to be seen what the anecdotes are, in themselves, and what is the merit of their narration. And here, let it not be supposed that we have any design to deprive the devil of his due. There are several very excellent anecdotes in “Charles O’Malley” very cleverly and pungently told. Many of the scenes in which Monsoon figures are rich—less, however, from the scenes themselves than from the piquant, but by no means original character of Monsoon—a drunken, maudlin, dishonest old Major, given to communicativeness and mock morality over his cups, and not over careful in detailing adventures which tell against himself. One or two of the college pictures are unquestionably good—but might have been better. In general, the reader is made to feel that fine subjects have fallen into unskilful hands. By way of instancing this assertion, and at the same time of conveying an idea of the tone and character of the stories, we will quote one of the shortest, and assuredly one of the best.
“Ah, by-the-by, how’s the Major?”
“Charmingly: only a little bit in a scrape just now. Sir Arthur—Lord Wellington, I mean—had him up for his fellows being caught pillaging, and gave him a devil of a rowing a few days ago.
“ ‘Very disorderly corps yours, Major O’Shaughnessy,’ said the general; ‘more men up for punishment than any regiment in the service.’
“Shaugh muttered something, but his voice was lost in a loud cock-a-doo-doo-doo, that some bold chanticleer set up at the moment.
“ ‘If the officers do their duty Major O’Shaughnessy, these acts of insubordination do not occur.’
“ ‘Cock-a-doo-doo-doo,’ was the reply. Some of the staff found it hard not to laugh; but the general went on—
“ ‘If, therefore, the practice does not cease, I’ll draft the men into West India regiments.’
“ ‘Cock-a-doo-doo-doo!’
“ ‘And if any articles pillaged from the inhabitants are detected in the quarters, or about the persons of the troops—’
“ ‘Cock-a-doo-doo-doo!’ screamed louder here than ever.
“ ‘Damn that cock—where is it?’
“There was a general look around on all sides, which seemed in vain; when a tremendous repetition of the cry resounded from O’Shaughnessy’s coat-pocket: thus detecting the valiant Major himself in the very practice of his corps. There was no standing this: every one burst out into a peal of laughter; and Lord Wellington himself could not resist, but turned away, muttering to himself as he went—‘Damned robbers every man of them,’ while a final war-note from the Major’s pocket closed the interview.”
Now this is an anecdote at which every one will laugh; but its effect might have been vastly heightened by putting a few words of grave morality and reprobation of the conduct of his troops, into the mouth of O’Shaughnessy, upon whose character they would have told well. The cock, in interrupting the thread of his discourse, would thus have afforded an excellent context. We have scarcely a reader, moreover, who will fail to perceive the want of tact shown in dwelling upon the mirth which the anecdote occasioned. The error here is precisely like that of a man’s laughing at his own spoken jokes. Our author is uniformly guilty of this mistake. He has an absurd fashion, also, of informing the reader, at the conclusion of each of his anecdotes, that, however good the anecdote might be, he (the reader) cannot enjoy it to the full extent in default of the manner in which it was orally narrated. He has no business to say anything of this kind. It is his duty to convey the manner not less than the matter of his narratives.
But we may say of these latter that, in general, they have the air of being remembered rather than invented. No man who has seen much of the rough life of the camp will fail to recognize among them many very old acquaintances. Some of them are as ancient as the hills, and have been, time out of mind, the common property of the bivouac. They have been narrated orally all the world over. The chief merit of the writer is, that he has been the first to collect and to print them. It is observable, in fact, that the second volume of the work is very far inferior to the first. The author seems to have exhausted his whole hoarded store in the beginning. His conclusion is barren indeed, and but for the historical details (for which he has no claim to merit) would be especially prosy and dull. Now the true invention never exhausts itself. It is mere cant and ignorance to talk of the possibility of the really imaginative man’s “writing himself out.” His soul but derives nourishment from the streams that flow therefrom. As well prate about the aridity of the eternal ocean εξ ουπερ παντες ποταμοι. So long as the universe of thought shall furnish matter for novel combinations, so long will the spirit of true genius be original, be exhaustless—be itself.
A few cursory observations. The book is filled to over-flowing with songs of very doubtful excellence, the most at which are put into the mouth of one Micky Free, an amusing Irish servant of O’Malley’s, and are given as his impromptu effusions. The subject of the improvisos is always the matter in hand at the moment of composition. The author evidently prides himself upon his poetical powers, about which the less we say the better; but if anything were wanting to assure us of his absurd ignorance and inappreciation of Art, we should find the fullest assurance in the mode in which these doggrel verses are introduced.
The occasional sentiment with which the volumes are interspersed there is an absolute necessity for skipping.
Can anybody tell us what is meant by the affectation of the word L’envoy which is made the heading of two prefaces?
That portion of the account of the battle of Waterloo which gives O’Malley’s experiences while a prisoner, and in close juxta-position to Napoleon, bears evident traces of having been translated, and very literally too, from a French manuscript.
The English of the work is sometimes even amusing. We have continually, for example, eat, the present, for ate, the perfect—see page 17. At page 16, we have this delightful sentence—“Captain Hammersley, however, never took further notice of me, but continued to recount, for the amusement of those about, several excellent stories of his military career, which I confess were heard with every test of delight by all save me.” At page 357 we have some sage talk about “the entire of the army;” and at page 368, the accomplished O’Malley speaks of “drawing a last look upon his sweetheart.” These things arrest our attention as we open the book at random. It abounds in them, and in vulgarisms even much worse than they.
But why speak of vulgarisms of language? There is a disgusting vulgarism of thought which pervades and contaminates this whole production, and from which a delicate or lofty mind will shrink as from a pestilence. Not the least repulsive manifestation of this leprosy is to be found in the author’s blind and grovelling worship of mere rank. Of the Prince Regent, that filthy compound of all that is bestial—that lazar-house of all moral corruption—he scruples not to speak in terms of the grossest adulation—sneering at Edmund Burke in the same villainous breath in which he extols the talents, the graces and the virtues of George the Fourth! That any man, to-day, can be found so degraded in heart as to style this reprobate, “one who, in every feeling of his nature, and in every feature of his deportment was every inch a prince”—is matter for grave reflection and sorrowful debate. The American, at least, who shall peruse the concluding pages of the book now under review, and not turn in disgust from the base sycophancy which infects them, is unworthy of his country and his name. But the truth is, that a gross and contracted soul renders itself unquestionably manifest in almost every line of the composition.
And this—this is the work, in respect to which its author, aping the airs of intellect, prates about his “haggard cheek,” his “sunken eye,” his “aching and tired head,” his “nights of toil” and (Good Heavens!) his “days of thought!” That the thing is popular we grant—while that we cannot deny the fact, we grieve. But the career of true taste is onward—and now more vigorously onward than ever—and the period, perhaps, is not hopelessly distant, when, in decrying the mere balderdash of such matters as “Charles O’Malley,” we shall do less violence to the feelings and judgment even of the populace, than, we much fear, has been done to-day.
| [3] | Nickname for the populace in the middle ages |
| [4] | Callimachus—Hymn to Apollo. |
Ballads and other Poems. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Author of “Voices of the Night,” “Hyperion,” etc.: Second Edition. John Owen: Cambridge.
“Il y a à parier,” says Chamfort, “que toute idée publique, toute convention reçue, est une sottise, car elle a convenue au plus grand nombre.”—One would be safe in wagering that any given public idea is erroneous, for it has been yielded to the clamor of the majority;—and this strictly philosophical, although somewhat French assertion has especial bearing upon the whole race of what are termed maxims and popular proverbs; nine-tenths of which are the quintessence of folly. One of the most deplorably false of them is the antique adage, De gustibus non est disputandum—there should be no disputing about taste. Here the idea designed to be conveyed is that any one person has as just right to consider his own taste the true, as has any one other—that taste itself, in short, is an arbitrary something, amenable to no law, and measurable by no definite rules. It must be confessed, however, that the exceedingly vague and impotent treatises which are alone extant, have much to answer for as regards confirming the general error. Not the least important service which, hereafter, mankind will owe to Phrenology, may perhaps, be recognised in an analysis of the real principles, and a digest of the resulting laws of taste. These principles, in fact, are as clearly traceable, and these laws as readily susceptible of system as are any whatever.
In the meantime, the inane adage above mentioned is in no respect more generally, more stupidly, and more pertinaciously quoted than by the admirers of what is termed the “good old Pope,” or the “good old Goldsmith school” of poetry, in reference to the bolder, more natural, and more ideal compositions of such authors as Coëtlogon and Lamartine[[5]] in France; Herder, Körner, and Uhland in Germany; Brun and Baggesen in Denmark; Bellman, Tegnér, and Nyberg[[6]] in Sweden; Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, and Tennyson in England; Lowell and Longfellow in America. “De gustibus non,” say these “good-old-school” fellows; and we have no doubt that their mental translation of the phrase is—“We pity your taste—we pity every body’s taste but our own.”
It is our purpose, hereafter, when occasion shall be afforded us, to controvert in an article of some length, the popular idea that the poets just mentioned owe to novelty, to trickeries of expression, and to other meretricious effects, their appreciation by certain readers:—to demonstrate (for the matter is susceptible of demonstration) that such poetry and such alone has fulfilled the legitimate office of the muse; has thoroughly satisfied an earnest and unquenchable desire existing in the heart of man. In the present number of our Magazine we have left ourselves barely room to say a few random words of welcome to these “Ballads,” by Longfellow, and to tender him, and all such as he, the homage of our most earnest love and admiration.
The volume before us (in whose outward appearance the keen “taste” of genius is evinced with nearly as much precision as in its internal soul) includes, with several brief original pieces, a translation from the Swedish of Tegnér. In attempting (what never should be attempted) a literal version of both the words and the metre of this poem, Professor Longfellow has failed to do justice either to his author or himself. He has striven to do what no man ever did well and what, from the nature of language itself, never can be well done. Unless, for example, we shall come to have an influx of spondees in our English tongue, it will always be impossible to construct an English hexameter. Our spondees, or, we should say, our spondaic words, are rare. In the Swedish they are nearly as abundant as in the Latin and Greek. We have only “compound,” “context,” “footfall,” and a few other similar ones. This is the difficulty; and that it is so will become evident upon reading “The Children of the Lord’s Supper,” where the sole readable verses are those in which we meet with the rare spondaic dissyllables. We mean to say readable as Hexameters; for many of them will read very well as mere English Dactylics with certain irregularities.
But within the narrow compass now left us we must not indulge in anything like critical comment. Our readers will be better satisfied perhaps with a few brief extracts from the original poems of the volume—which we give for their rare excellence, without pausing now to say in what particulars this excellence exists.
And, like the water’s flow
Under December’s snow
Came a dull voice of woe,
From the heart’s chamber.
So the loud laugh of scorn,
Out of those lips unshorn
From the deep drinking-horn
Blew the foam lightly.
As with his wings aslant
Sails the fierce cormorant
Seeking some rocky haunt,
With his prey laden,
So toward the open main,
Beating to sea again,
Through the wild hurricane,
Bore I the maiden.
Down came the storm and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused like a frighted steed
Then leaped her cable’s length.
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter’s voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.
It sounds to him like her mother’s voice
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.
The rising moon has hid the stars
Her level rays like golden bars
Lie on the landscape green
With shadows brown between.
Love lifts the boughs whose shadows deep
Are life’s oblivion, the soul’s sleep,
And kisses the closed eyes
Of him who slumbering lies.
Friends my soul with joy remembers!
How like quivering flames they start,
When I fan the living embers
On the hearth-stone of my heart.
Hearest thou voices on the shore,
That our ears perceive no more
Deafened by the cataract’s roar?
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell like a falling star.
Some of these passages cannot be fully appreciated apart from the context—but we address these who have read the book. Of the translations we have not spoken. It is but right to say, however, that “The Luck of Edenhall” is a far finer poem, in every respect, than any of the original pieces. Nor would we have our previous observations misunderstood. Much as we admire the genius of Mr. Longfellow, we are fully sensible of his many errors of affectation and imitation. His artistical skill is great, and his ideality high. But his conception of the aims of poesy is all wrong; and this we shall prove at some future day—to our own satisfaction, at least. His didactics are all out of place. He has written brilliant poems—by accident; that is to say when permitting his genius to get the better of his conventional habit of thinking—a habit deduced from German study. We do not mean to say that a didactic moral may not be well made the under-current of a poetical thesis; but that it can never be well put so obtrusively forth, as in the majority of his compositions. There is a young American who, with ideality not richer than that of Longfellow and with less artistical knowledge, has yet composed far truer poems, merely through the greater propriety of his themes. We allude to James Russel Lowell; and in the number of this Magazine for last month, will be found a ballad entitled “Rosaline,” affording excellent exemplification of our meaning. This composition has unquestionably its defects, and the very defects which are never perceptible in Mr. Longfellow—but we sincerely think that no American poem equals it in the higher elements of song.
| [5] | We allude here chiefly to the “David” of Coëtlogon, and only to the “Chûte d’un Ange” of Lamartine. |
| [6] | C. Julia Nyberg, author of the “Dikter von Euphrosyne.” |
The Critical and Miscellaneous Writings of Henry Lord Brougham, to which is Prefixed a Sketch of his Character. Two volumes. Lea and Blanchard.
That Lord Brougham was an extraordinary man no one in his senses will deny. An intellect of unusual capacity, goaded into diseased action by passions nearly ferocious, enabled him to astonish the world, and especially the “hero-worshippers,” as the author of Sartor-Resartus has it, by the combined extent and variety of his mental triumphs. Attempting many things, it may at least be said that he egregiously failed in none. But that he pre-eminently excelled in any cannot be affirmed with truth, and might well be denied à priori. We have no faith in admirable Crichtons, and this merely because we have implicit faith in Nature and her laws. “He that is born to be a man,” says Wieland, in his ‘Peregrinus Proteus,’ “neither should nor can be anything nobler, greater, nor better than a man.” The Broughams of the human intellect are never its Newtons or its Bayles. Yet the contemporaneous reputation to be acquired by the former is naturally greater than any which the latter may attain. The versatility of one whom we see and hear is a more dazzling and more readily appreciable merit than his profundity; which latter is best estimated in the silence of the closet, and after the quiet lapse of years. What impression Lord Brougham has stamped upon his age, cannot be accurately determined until Time has fixed and rendered definite the lines of the medal; and fifty years hence it will be difficult, perhaps, even to make out the deepest indentations of the exergue. Like Coleridge he should be regarded as one who might have done much, had he been satisfied with attempting but little.
The title of the book before us is, we think, somewhat disingenuous. These two volumes contain but a small portion of the “Critical and Miscellaneous Writings” of Lord Brougham; and the preface itself assures us that what is here published forms only a part of his anonymous contributions to the Edinburgh Review. In fact three similar selections from his “Miscellaneous Works” have been given to the world within a year or two past, by Philadelphian publishers, and neither of these selections embrace any of the matter now issued.
The present volumes, however, are not the less valuable on this account. They contain many of the most noted and some of the best compositions of the author. Among other articles of interest we have the celebrated “Discourse on the Objects, Pleasures and Advantages of Science”—a title, by the way, in which the word “pleasures” is one of the purest supererogation. That this discourse is well written, we, of course, admit, since we do not wish to be denounced as blockheads; but we beg leave to disagree, most positively, with the Preface, which asserts that “there was only one individual living by whom it could have been produced.” This round asseveration will only excite a smile upon the lips of every man of the slightest pretension to scientific acquirement. We are personally acquainted with at least a dozen individuals who could have written this treatise as well as the Lord Chancellor has written it. In fact, a discourse of this character is by no means difficult of composition—a discourse such as Lord Brougham has given us. His whole design consists in an unmethodical collection of the most striking and at the same time the most popularly comprehensible facts in general science. And it cannot be denied that this plan of demonstrating the advantages of science as a whole by detailing insulated specimens of its interest is a most unphilosophical and inartistical mode of procedure—a mode which even puts one in mind of the σκολαστικος offering a brick as a sample of the house he wished to sell. Neither is the essay free (as should be imperatively demanded in a case of this nature) from very gross error and mis-statement. Its style, too, in its minor points, is unusually bad. The strangest grammatical errors abound, of which the initial pages are especially full, and the whole is singularly deficient in that precision which should characterise a scientific discourse. In short, it is an entertaining essay, but in some degree superficial and quackish, and could have been better written by any one of a multitude of living savans.
There is a very amusing paper, in this collection, upon the authorship of Junius. We allude to it, now especially, by way of corroborating what we said, in our January number, touching the ordinary character of the English review-system. The article was furnished the Edinburgh Quarterly by its author, who, no doubt, received for it a very liberal compensation. It is, nevertheless, one of the most barefaced impositions we ever beheld; being nothing in the world more than a tame compendium, fact by fact, of the book under discussion—“The Identity of Junius with a Distinguished Living Character Established.” There is no attempt at analysis—no new fact is adduced—no novel argument is urged—and yet the thing is called a criticism and liberally paid for as such. The secret of this style of Review-making is that of mystifying the reader by an artful substitution of the interest appertaining to the text for interest aroused by the commentator.
Pantology; or a systematic survey of Human Knowledge; Proposing a Classification of all its branches, and illustrating their History, Relations, Uses, and Objects; with a Synopsis of their leading Facts and Principles; and a Select Catalogue of Books on all Subjects, suitable for a Cabinet Library. The whole designed as a Guide to Study for advanced Students in Colleges, Academies, and Schools; and as a popular Directory in Literature, Science and the Arts. Second Edition. By Roswell Park, A. M., Professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania, &c. Hogan and Thompson: Philadelphia.
The title of this work explains its nature with accuracy. To human knowledge in general, it is what a map of the world is to geography. The design is chiefly, to classify, and thus present a dependent and clearly discernible whole. To those who have paid much attention to Natural History and the endless, unstable, and consequently vexatious classifications which there occur—to those, in especial, who have labored over the “Conchologies” of De Blainville and Lamarck, some faint—some very faint idea of the difficulties attending such a labor as this, will occur. There have been numerous prior attempts of the same kind, and although this is unquestionably one of the best, we cannot regard it as the best. Mr. Park has chosen a highly artificial scheme of arrangement; and both reason and experience show us that natural classifications, or those which proceed upon broad and immediately recognisable distinctions, are alone practically or permanently successful. We say this, however, with much deference to the opinions of a gentleman, whose means of acquiring knowledge, have been equalled only by his zeal in its pursuit, and whose general talents we have had some personal opportunity of estimating.
We mean nothing like criticism in so brief a paragraph as we can here afford, upon a work so voluminous and so important as the one before us. Our design is merely to call the attention of our friends to the publication—whose merits are obvious and great. Its defects are, of course, numerous. We mean rather to say, that in every work of this nature, it is in the power of almost every reader to suggest a thousand emendations. We might object to many of the details. We must object to nearly all of the belles-lettres portion of the book. We cannot stand being told, for example, that “Barlow’s ‘Columbiad’ is a poem of considerable merit;” nor are we rendered more patient under the infliction of this and similar opinions, by the information that Vander Vondel and Vander Doos (the deuce!) wrote capital Dutch epics, while “the poems of Cats are said to be spirited and pious!” We know nothing about cats, nor cats about piety.
The volume is sadly disfigured by typographical errors. On the title-page of the very first “province” is a blunder in Greek.
The Student-Life of Germany: By William Howitt, Author of the “Rural Life of England,” “Book of the Seasons,” etc. From the unpublished MS. of Dr. Cornelius. Containing nearly Forty of the most Famous Student Songs. Carey & Hart: Philadelphia.
Mr. Howitt has here given us the only complete and faithful account of the Student-Life of Germany which has appeared in any quarter of the world. The institutions and customs which his book describes, form, to use his own language, “the most singular state of social existence to be found in the bosom of civilized Europe,” and are doubly curious and worthy of investigation—first, on account of the jealousy with which the students have hitherto withheld all information on the subject, and secondly, on account of the deep root which the customs themselves have taken in the heart of the German life. The Burschendom, of which we have all heard so much, yet so vaguely, is no modern or evanescent eccentricity; but a matter of firm and reverent faith coeval with the universities; and this faith is now depicted, con amore, and with knowledge, by a German who has himself felt and confessed it. To the philosopher, to the man of the world, and especially, to the man of imagination, this beautiful volume will prove a rare treat. Its novelty will startle all.
Lectures on Modern History, from the Irruption of the Northern Nations to the Close of the American Revolution. By William Smyth, Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge. Two volumes. From the Second London Edition, with a Preface, List of Books on American History, etc. By Jared Sparks, L. L. D., Professor of Ancient and Modern History in Harvard University. John Owen: Cambridge.
Professor Smyth’s system of history is remarkable, if not peculiar. He selects certain periods, and groups around them individually those events to which they have closest affinity not only in time, but character. The effect is surprising through its force and perspicuity. The name of Professor Sparks would be alone sufficient to recommend these volumes—but in themselves they are a treasure.
First Book of Natural History, Prepared for the Use of Schools and Colleges. By W. S. W. Ruschenberger, M. D., Surgeon in the U. S. Navy, &c. &c. From the Text of Milne Edwards & Achille Comte, Professors of Natural History in the Colleges of Henri IV. and Charlemagne. With Plates. Turner & Fisher: Philadelphia.
This little book forms, in the original, the first of a series of First or Elementary works on Natural History, arranged by Messieurs Edwards and Comte, two gentlemen distinguished for labors of the kind, and who enjoy the patronage of the “Royal Council of Public Instruction of France.” The translator is well known to the reading world, and there can be no doubt of the value of the publication in its present form.
A System of Elocution, with Special Reference to Gesture, to the Treatment of Stammering, and Defective Articulation, Comprising Numerous Diagrams and Engraved Figures, Illustrative of the Subject. By Andrew Comstock, M. D. Published by the Author: Philadelphia.
This is, in many respects, an excellent book, although the principal claim of Dr. Comstock is that of having cleverly compiled. His method of representing, or notating, the modulations of the speaking voice, is original, as he himself states, but there is little else which can be called so. Originality, however, is not what we seek in a school-book, and this has the merit of tasteful selection and precision of style.
Sturmer; A Tale of Mesmerism. To which are added other Sketches from Life. By Isabella F. Romer. Two Volumes. Lea & Blanchard: Philadelphia.
This work is republished, we presume, not so much on account of its intrinsic merit, as on account of the present émeute in our immediate vicinity and elsewhere, on the subject of Animal Magnetism. “Sturmer,” the principal story, is, nevertheless, well narrated and will do much in the way of helping unbelief. The minor tales are even beautiful. “The Mother and Daughter” is exceedingly pathetic.
Famous Old People. Being the Second Epoch of Grandfather’s Chair. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Author of “Twice-Told Tales.” Boston: Tappan & Dennet.
Mr. Hawthorne has received high praise from men whose opinions we have been accustomed to respect. Hereafter we shall endeavor to speak of his tales with that deliberation which is their due. The one now before us is a simple and pretty story.
History of the Life of Richard Cœur de Lion, King of England. By G. P. R. James, Esq., author of “Richelieu,” &c. Two volumes. New York: I. & H. G. Langley.
We like Mr. James far better as the historian or biographer than as the novelist. The truth is, it is sheer waste of time to read second-rate fictions by men of merely imitative talent, when at the same expense of money and labor we can indulge in the never-failing stream of invention now poured forth by true genius.
The Effinghams; or, Home as I Found it. Two volumes. By the author of the “Victim of Chancery,” &c. New York: Samuel Colman.
These volumes are satirical and have some fair hits at Mr. Cooper, against whom they are especially levelled; but we like neither this design of personal ridicule nor the manner in which it is effected.
Organic Chemistry in its Applications to Agriculture and Physiology. By Justus Leiby, M. D, &c. Edited from the MS. of the Author, by Lyon Playfair, Ph. D. Second American Edition, with an Introduction, Notes and Appendix, by John W. Webster, M. D., Professor of Chemistry in Harvard University. John Owen: Cambridge.
This book excited and still excites great attention in England. It is needless to speak of its merits, which are well understood by all students of Physics.
Arbitrary Power, Popery, Protestantism; as contained in Nos. XV. XVIII. XIX. of the Dublin Review. Philadelphia: M. Fithian.
A republication from the Dublin Review of three able articles in defence of Catholicism.
Second Book of Natural History, Prepared for the Use of Schools and Colleges. By W. S. W. Ruschenberger, M. D., &c. From the text of Milne Edwards and Achille Comte. With Plates. Philadelphia: Turner & Fisher.
We need only say of this volume that it is a combination of the “First Book” just noticed, although sufficiently distinct in itself.
The Amazonian Republic Recently Discovered in the Interior of Peru. By Ex-Midshipman Timothy Savage, B. C. New York: Samuel Colman.
This is a very passable satirical fiction, in the manner of Gulliver. We should not be surprised if it were the composition of Dr. Beasely of this city.
St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople: His Life, Eloquence and Piety. By W. Joseph Walter, late of St. Edmund’s College. Philadelphia: Godey & McMichael.
An eloquent tribute to the memory of an eloquent and in every respect a remarkable man.
Life in China. The Porcelain Tower; or Nine Stories of China. Compiled from Original Sources. By T. T. T. Embellished by J. Leech. Lea & Blanchard: Philadelphia.
This is a very clever and amusing jeu-d’esprit, in which the oddities, or what we regard as the oddities of “Life in China,” are divertingly caricatured. The work is handsomely printed, and the designs by Leech are well conceived and executed.
Select Poems. By Mrs. L. H. Sigourney. Fourth Edition, with Illustrations. Edward C. Biddle: Philadelphia.
The publisher, in his preface, states that three editions of this work, comprising eight thousand copies, have been sold; and of this we are pleased to hear; but we are not equally pleased with the information (conveyed also in the preface) that a new set of illustrations is given. If these “illustrations” are new, then “new” has come to be employed in the sense of “old.” The plates are not only antique but trashy in other respects. Of the poems themselves we have no space to speak fully this month. Some of them are excellent; and there are many which merit no commendation. Mrs. Sigourney deserves much, but by no means all of the applause which her compositions have elicited.
It would be easy to cite, from the volume now before us, numerous brief passages of the truest beauty; but we fear that it would be more difficult to point out an entire poem which would bear examination, as a whole. In the piece entitled “Indian Names,” there are thoughts and expression which would do honor to any one. We note, also, an unusually noble idea in the “Death of an Infant.”
——forth from those blue eyes
There spake a wishful tenderness—a doubt
Whether to grieve or sleep, which innocence
Alone may wear.
Spring Fashions 1842 Latest Style
Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience. Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious punctuation and typesetting errors have been corrected without note. Greek phrases in this ebook contain characters which may not display in some devices based on the fonts and character sets available.
A cover has been created for this ebook and is placed in the public domain.
The Duello, mentioned in the story The Doom of the Traitress, can be found in the February 1842 issue of Graham’s Magazine.
[End of Graham’s Magazine, Vol. XX, No. 3, March 1842, George R. Graham, Editor]