So perfect indeed is the skill and tact of the handling, and so admirably is the whole character of either work kept up, that it cannot be doubted, had they been put forth as genuine ancient memoirs, recovered by any accident you will, their success as forgeries would have been as complete as that very remarkable—but to me very dull—book, “The Amber Witch” of the Pastor Meinhold, or the supposititious letters of Shelley and other notables of the nineteenth century, which have recently created so much wonder and excitement in the literary world.
What is to me, however, even more remarkable than the excellence of these chaste and unpretending little fictions, is the total absence of bruit or loud encomium with which they have issued both from the English and American presses; for in good sooth we have hardly heard them named, while they are in every respect the cleverest and most highly wrought, and in their own line the very best fictitious works that we have seen in years.
Fiction they undoubtedly are, in some sense; but fiction of some such nature—far be it from me to write profanely—as the parables of our ever-blessed Saviour, and in their humbler sphere and lesser degree improvable to the same good end. There is not one line in either from which any mental alchemy could extract one grain of evil counsel or unholy thought; on the contrary, there is not one which prompts not to good works, and faith, and reliance in the mercy and justice of the Most High.
After the Holy Bible itself, we are cognizant of no reading which may be put more fitly into the innocent hands of a beloved daughter on a Sunday afternoon, than either of these beautiful and touching little volumes; and to render the effects more certain, as more salutary, so far is there from being any effort or straining after religionism, moralizing or lay-preaching, so apt to frustrate their own ends, that the whole tenor of each flows so naturally and with so much probability forward, the thinkings, doings and speakings of the actors springing so spontaneously from the causes, that we read on enthralled, engrossed, with a tear often stealing to the eye, hardly able to believe that we are not perusing the real memoirs of real authors; and think nothing of the moral until the book is closed and the paramount interest ended.
It is an evil sign in relation to the influence and tone of the press-criticism of any countries, when we find the vulgar absurdities and exaggerations of Cockton, the trivial and overdone flippancies of Albert Smith, or even the brilliant eccentricities of Thackeray, over-lauded to the skies, while such gems of nature, verisimilitude and poesy, as these little volumes, creep forward, almost unushered, timid and unknown to fame, into the gradual favor of the public.
In one word, I know not nor conjecture to what dead or living author, male or female, of either hemisphere they may be attributed; but I do know there is not one—no! not Sir Walter himself—who would not derive fresh reputation from their authorship; and in order to substantiate this my opinion, I proceed to extract somewhat largely from the former work, which—although I have hitherto spoken of them in general terms, and in common, as cognate compositions, and I doubt not by the same pen—is by many degrees the abler and more perfect, as far as the more agreeable and fascinating volume.
There is not a syllable in it which might not have been penned in her libellus by sweet Margaret More, bravest and best of English daughters—not one, which did not probably, in some shape or other, pass through her living brain—not one, to make an end of it, which, as we read, we do not implicitly believe, for the moment, to be of her actual penning.
There is, moreover, a fine, free humor, singularly characteristic of the age and the characters of “The Household of Sir Thomas More,” which is lacking, and which would perhaps have been out of place, in the “Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell;” but which nevertheless beautifully relieves the soft and tender melancholy of the memoir.
It is, however, in truthfulness, if I may not absolutely say truth, that Margaret’s libellus is most clearly superior; for we are constrained, in justice, to say that the portraiture of John Milton in his domestic relations, however great his public glory, is most overweening flattery, and that the happiness ascribed to the latter portion of “the married life of Mary Powell,” is as pure a fiction as ever emanated from the fancy of the wildest romancer.
But to return to our “A Margarettâ More, libellus, quindecim annos nata, Chelseiæ inceptus;” here we have, in her own words, the incident—not accident—of its inception.