Left his throne above.
His roughness is frequently reprehensible. We meet every where, or at least far too often, with lines such as this—
Its clustered stars beneath Spring’s footsteps meets
in which the consonants are more sadly clustered than the stars. The poet who would bring uninterruptedly together such letters as t h s p and r, has either no ear at all, or two unusually long ones. The word “footsteps,” moreover, should never be used in verse. To read the line quoted, one must mouth like Forrest and hiss like a serpent.
Twice-Told Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. James Monroe & Co.: Boston.
We have always regarded the Tale (using this word in its popular acceptation) as affording the best prose opportunity for display of the highest talent. It has peculiar advantages which the novel does not admit. It is, of course, a far finer field than the essay. It has even points of superiority over the poem. An accident has deprived us, this month, of our customary space for review; and thus nipped in the bud a design long cherished of treating this subject in detail, taking Mr. Hawthorne’s volumes as a text. In May we shall endeavor to carry out our intention. At present we are forced to be brief.
With rare exception—in the case of Mr. Irving’s “Tales of a Traveller” and a few other works of a like cast—we have had no American tales of high merit. We have had no skilful compositions—nothing which could bear examination as works of art. Of twattle called tale-writing we have had, perhaps, more than enough. We have had a superabundance of the Rosa-Matilda effusions—gilt-edged paper all couleur de rose: a full allowance of cut-and-thrust blue-blazing melodramaticisms; a nauseating surfeit of low miniature copying of low life, much in the manner, and with about half the merit, of the Dutch herrings and decayed cheeses of Van Tuyssel—of all this, eheu jam satis!
Mr. Hawthorne’s volumes appear to us misnamed in two respects. In the first place they should not have been called “Twice-Told Tales”—for this is a title which will not bear repetition. If in the first collected edition they were twice-told, of course now they are thrice-told.—May we live to hear them told a hundred times! In the second place, these compositions are by no means all “Tales.” The most of them are essays properly so called. It would have been wise in their author to have modified his title, so as to have had reference to all included. This point could have been easily arranged.
But under whatever titular blunders we receive the book, it is most cordially welcome. We have seen no prose composition by any American which can compare with some of these articles in the higher merits, or indeed in the lower; while there is not a single piece which would do dishonor to the best of the British essayists.