Agnes Grey, an Autobiography. By the Author of “Jane Eyre,” “Shirley,” etc. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson.
This is a charming novel, full of fine character painting, and strongly marked by that exquisite development and analysis of the female heart, which distinguishes all the novels of this writer. As an autobiography, partaking of the nature of confessions, it has afforded fine scope for the display of the peculiar powers of the author. Agnes Grey, the heroine, herself, is one of the most vigorous and truthful drawings of character—one of the finest pieces of pen-limning that we have encountered any where, though not to young readers, perhaps, as distinctive as that of “Shirley,” as it has less of the really romantic to give it impressiveness. He gives in this novel a charm to love, in the vulgar course of this world’s affairs, by laying bare the sentiment of the heart—the exceeding beauty of pure love unadorned. As Hazlett says of Shakspeare’s women, “We think as little of her face, as she does herself, but are let into the secrets of her heart, and are charmed.” It is not until she has fallen in love, that our hearts open kindly to receive her, for the full beauty of the woman is then exposed to our worshiping eyes.
Rosalie Murray is a different character, but drawn with a keen discrimination, a nice discernment of coquetry, rarely met with. She is the most finished flirt of all the class—nature, and a heart totally uneducated, no less than the scheming of an ambitious mother, made her a very beautiful fiend.
He who quarrels with the loves of Edward Weston and Agnes Grey, must have read the novel, and studied human nature indifferently. We commend the work cordially to our readers, admonishing them that they will complain of its shortness; for we are mistaken if they do not find themselves, on closing the book, desirous—as we felt—of following the heroine in the holy duties and daily beauty of her life in her new sphere.
The Poetical and Prose Writings of Charles Sprague. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo.
This edition of Sprague is beautifully printed, is published under the sanction of the author, and contains a number of poems never before collected. Although the current style in poetry has changed since Sprague first won his reputation, and an entirely new class of poets has caught the public ear, Sprague himself has been excepted from the neglect which has fallen upon too many of his school. The reason is that Sprague is really a poet, and the form of composition which a poet assumes, whether it be that of Pope or Wordsworth, of Young or Browning, is never of itself sufficient to consign him to oblivion. It is impossible to read a page of the present volume without being impressed with the conviction that you are communing with a strong nature, sound in heart and brain, and piercing through the shows to the realities of things by a native force and vividness of conception. Sprague appears here as a satirist and humorist, as a lyrist and as a poet of sentiment. In all of these he is successful. His curiosity is one of the best occasional poems over written in the United States. When we consider how wide a variety of humorous and pathetic pictures are called into being in the unfolding of one teeming idea, and that amid all the variety, the impression of unity is never lost, we must admit it to be not only poetical in passages, but poetical in its whole spirit and execution. The Odes we do not like so well. They are full of brain, but the feeling and sentiment do not seem to us sufficiently hearty and impassioned. The best pieces in the volume are the poems devoted to the affections. These are expressions of tenderness, love, grief, and hope, coming from the heart and imagination of a strong man, and their intensity is heightened by their very reserve. They are arrows sent directly to the reader’s heart. We never have been able to wear them out by frequent reperusal, their pathos keeping always its morning freshness and searching sweetness.
Poems of Alice and Phœbe Carey. Philadelphia: Moss & Brother. 1 vol. 16mo.
There are few volumes more calculated to relax the rigidity of criticism than this elegant octo-duodecimo, gilded without and golden within. Sisters in song as in blood, the authoresses awaken the chivalric rather than the critical sentiment, although they are abundantly capable of bearing some of the most tormenting acquirements of the latter. There is a family likeness in their minds, but in Alice the imaginative element is predominant, while her sister displays more of the reflective. Both are poets as distinguished from fluent versifers of accredited commonplaces, and both manifest originality in their imagery and music, but the mind of Alice is remarkably sensitive and imaginative, melting at once into melody the moment her heart is filled with a poetical object, and absolutely gushing out in song. A fine poetical instinct of the most subtle and elusive character, seems to dwell at the very life-spring of her nature, so that poetry seems the necessity of her being, the inevitable mode in which her nature must be expressed, if expressed at all. The poem entitled “Pictures of Memory,” is one of the simplest and subtlest expressions of ethereal sentiment and refined imagination we ever read: it being an exquisite embodiment of a mood of mind rarely experienced in its purity by any intellect, and certainly never pictured forth with more truth to the spirit of the subject. Phœbe Carey hardly has this instinctive and unconscious certainty in the action of her mind, but excels in thoughtfulness, tenderness, and fancy, “leaning her ear” to catch “the still, sad music of humanity,” and conscious of a moral purpose in her singing. Both deserve a hearty recognition equally from their countrywomen and countrymen.