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 |