SKETCHES OF LIFE. BY A RADICAL.
It was an error to call this work[25] the autobiography of an individual. It is a picturing—faithful, minute, and eloquent—of the hardships, the sufferings, and the miseries endured by a large mass of our fellow men. It is an earnest and honest exposure of the hollowness that infests English society—an insight to the weakness of the substratum. It shows what education should have done, and what corruption really has done. Alton Locke is also a personification of the failings, as well as of the sufferings, that make up the sum of existence of a large class.
The author has effectually carried out his design—we will not say altogether with artistic consistency, or with book-making propriety. We know it is deemed a great offense against taste to make a novel the medium of exposing social dangers, or political inequalities and wrongs. We know that those who stick up for "the model," would have a fiction all fiction, or at least that the philosophy be very subordinate and the social aim be hidden so completely as not to be discernible excepting to the professional reader. But Alton Locke is an exception to all these objections. Spite of its defects, it is a perfect work—perfect, that it is invested with an air of the wildest romance, while it goes home to the heart and the judgment as a faithful picture—perfect, that it is eloquent and natural, and consistent with itself. It is one of those books which defy classification. We have not seen its like. And to those readers who accept our eulogy in earnest, Alton Locke will ever remain a token of rich enjoyment, and a memento that 1850 did produce at least one cherishable book.
The story of the biography will not impress so much or so favorably as the style. The hero is a widow's only child: his mother is a stern Calvinist. Her teachings, and the teaching of the vipers in religious form who come to administer consolation and to drink the old lady's tea, are hateful to an intense degree to Alton. He is of a poetic temperament, and a great admirer of nature. Opportunities of indulging his natural tastes are denied him. Born in a close London street, very rigidly watched and governed by his mother and the good men who come to visit her, his life is any thing but pleasant. But he subsequently becomes a tailor, reads largely, writes verses, turns Chartist, falls in love, and is imprisoned for spouting Chartism. The upshot of his rough life is, that he becomes a true Christian.
Several characters are hit off with great perfection. Such is the mother of Alton; and such is Sandye Mackaye, a friend to whom the boy occasionally ran for sympathy, and to borrow books.
But we will now draw upon the pages of the work itself, merely repeating that it is a remarkable composition, and one which men in high places would do well to ponder. It is a growth from the defects of our time, and should be taken as a presage that change must come. The working-men of this country will be indebted to Alton Locke for the manner in which he pleads their cause; all men should be gratified that the warning voice, which he will inevitably be deemed, is so moderate in tone and so philosophical in manner.
Alton's youth, we have said, was not happy. The following are his descriptions of his mother, and one of her associates: