It is but putting our criticism into another form to say that the novel is too long, and, as a mere story, might with advantage be compressed into at least two-thirds of its present bulk. There are, especially, two departments or points to which this remark is applicable. In the first place, the conversations are too numerous, too protracted, and run too much into trivialities and details. In the second place, the descriptions of scenery are too frequently introduced, and pushed to a wearisome enumeration of particulars and minute delineation of details. In this peculiarity the author is kept in countenance by most respectable literary associates. This sort of Pre-Raphaelite style of scenery-painting in words is a characteristic of most recent American novel, especially such as are written by women. Every rock, every clump of trees, every strip of sea-shore, every sloping hillside, sits for its portrait, and is reproduced with a tender conscientiousness of touch wholly disproportioned to the importance of the subject. When human hearts and human passions are animating or darkening the scene, we do not want to be detained by a botanist's description of plants or a geologist's sketch of rocks. The broad, free sweeps of Scott's brush in "The Pirate" are more effective than the delicate needle-point lines of the writer before us.
We think, too, that too much use is made of those strange and uncouth dialects which have to be represented to the eye by bad spelling. We have the familiar Yankee type in Mr. Bangs, and a new form of phraseology in the speech of the Newfoundland fishermen. A little of this is well enough, but it should not be pushed to an extreme. The author's style, in general, is vigorous and expressive; it is the garb of an original mind, and often takes striking forms; but in grace and simplicity there is room for improvement, and we doubt not that improvement will come with practice.
There are many passages which we should like to quote as specimens of the imaginative power, forcible description, and apt illustration which are shown in this work. Whether the author has ever written verse or not, he is a poet in the best sense of that much-abused word. To him Nature in all its forms is animated; it sympathizes with all his moods, and takes on the hues of his thought. There are very few of these paragraphs that are easily separable; they are fixed in the page, and cannot be understood apart from it. Besides, many of these beauties are minute,—a gleaming word here and there,—but making the track of the story glow like the phosphorescent waters of the tropics.
We give a few paragraphs at random:—
"Does the sea hold the secret?
"Along the wharves, along the little beaches, around the circuit of the little coves, along the smooth or broken face of rock, the sea, which cannot rest, is busy. These little waves and this long swell, that now are here at work, have been ere now at home in the great inland sea of Europe, breathed on by soft, warm winds from fruit-groves, vineyards, and wide fields of flowers,—have sparkled in the many-colored lights, and felt the trivial oars and dallying fingers of the loiterers, on the long canals of Venice,—have quenched the ashes of the Dutchman's pipe, thrown overboard from his dull, laboring treckschuyt,—have wrought their patient tasks in the dim caverns of the Indian Archipelago,—have yielded to the little builders under water means and implements to rear their towering altar, dwelling, monument.
"These little waves have crossed the ocean, tumbling like porpoises at play, and, taking on a savage nature in the Great Wilderness, have thundered in close ranks and countless numbers against man's floating fortress,—have stormed the breach and climbed up over the walls in the ship's riven side,—have followed, howling and hungry as mad wolves, the crowded raft,—have leaped upon it, snatching off, one by one, the weary, worn-out men and women,—have taken up and borne aloft, as if on hands and shoulders, the one chance human body that is brought in to land, and the long spur, from which man's dancing cordage wastes by degrees, find yields its place to long, green streamers, much like those that clung to this tall, taper tree when it stood in the Northern forest.
"These waves have rolled their breasts about amid the wrecks and weeds of the hot stream that comes up many thousands of miles out of the Gulf of Mexico, as the great Mississippi goes down into it, and by-and-by these waves will move, all numb and chilled, among the mighty icebergs and ice-fields that must be brought down from the poles."
"She asked, 'Have you given up being a priest, Mr. Urston?'