Dion and the Sibyls is a work of uncommon merit, and may be classed, in our opinion, with Fabiola and Callista, which is the highest compliment we could possibly pay to a romance of the early period of Christian history. The Dion of the story is Dionysius the Areopagite in his youth, and before his conversion. The Sibyls are introduced in reference to their predictions of a coming Saviour of mankind. The object of the author is to exhibit the fearful need which existed in heathen society for a divine intervention, and the general, widespread desire and expectation of such an event at the time when our Lord actually appeared on the earth. This is done by means of a plot which is woven from the personal history of a nephew of Lepidus the Triumvir, a young Roman noble of Greek education, and an intimate friend of Dionysius, who came to Rome with his mother and sister at the close of the reign of Augustus, to claim the sequestrated estate of his father, one of the generals who helped to win the battle of Philippi. The appeal of the young Paulus Æmilius Lepidus to Augustus at a time when the latter was visiting the wealthy Knight Mamurra at his superb villa at Formiæ, and a plot of Tiberius Cæsar to carry off Agatha, the young man's sister, afford an occasion of describing the principal persons of the Roman court. This is done in a graphic and masterly manner. The representation of the aged Augustus is something perfect in its kind. The portraits of Tiberius, Germanicus, Caligula, then a child, the royal ladies, Sejanus the Prætorian prefect, Velleius Paterculus, Thellus the chief of the gladiators, and a number of other persons representing various classes of Romans, are admirably and vividly drawn. The breaking of the ferocious Sejan horse by the young Æmilius at the public games of Formiæ is a scene of striking originality and power. The campaign of Germanicus against the Germans is also well described. In fact, Mr. Keon makes the old Roman world reappear before us like a panorama. He shows himself to be a thorough and minute classical scholar and historian on every page and in every line. But beyond and above all this, he exhibits a power of philosophical reasoning, and an insight into the deepest significance of Christianity, which elevate his thrilling romance to the rank of a work of the highest moral and religious scope. The description of the demons by the Lady Plancina is an original and awfully sublime conception surpassing anything in the Mystique Diabolique of Görres. The author's great masterpiece, however, is the argument of Dionysius on the being of One God before the court of Augustus, a piece of writing of which any professed philosopher might be proud.
The history of Paulus Æmilius, who is really the hero of the work, brings him at last to Judæa at the time of the murder of St. John the Baptist, and the closing scenes of the life of our Lord. This gives the author the opportunity of describing a momentary glimpse which the brave and virtuous Roman was favored with of the form and countenance of the Divine Redeemer, as he was passing down the Mount of Olives. Mr. Keon undertook a difficult task, one in which many have failed, when he ventured on introducing the august figure of our Lord into his picture. We are fastidious in matters of this kind, and not easily satisfied by any attempt at giving in language what sculptors and painters usually fall short of expressing in marble and on canvas. Mr. Keon's bold effort pleases us so much that we cannot help wishing he would try his hand at some more sketches of the same kind. We should like to see some scenes from the evangelical history and the Acts of the Apostles produced under an ideal and imaginative form with an ability equal to that which our author has displayed in his pictures of the Augustan age. The success of Renan's Life of Jesus is due not so much to the popularity of his detestable and absurd theories, as to the attraction of his theme and the charm of a vivid, lifelike representation of the scenes, manners, and events of the period when our Lord lived and taught in Judæa. A similar work, produced in accordance with the true Catholic idea of the august, divine person of the Son of God made man, would do more to counteract the poison of the infamous infidel literature of the day in the popular mind than any grave argumentative treatise. We pronounce Mr. Keon's Dion and the Sibyls without hesitation to be a dramatic and philosophical masterpiece, and we trust that he will not allow his genius to lie idle, but will give us more works of the same sort. Whether the vitiated taste of the novel-reading world will appreciate works of so classical a stamp, we are unable to say. But all those who relish truth conveyed through the forms of the purest art will thank Mr. Keon for the pleasure he has given them, if they shall, as we did, by chance take up his book and peruse it attentively, and will concur with us in wishing that a work of so much merit and value might be better known and more widely circulated.
Literature and Life. Edwin P. Whipple. Enlarged Edition. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1871.
The essays contained in this volume are ten in number: Authors in their Relations to Life; Novels and Novelists; Wit and Humor; The Ludicrous Side of Life; Genius; Intellectual Health and Disease; Use and Misuse of Words; Wordsworth; Bryant; Stupid Conservatism and Malignant Reform.
Of these the first six were originally delivered by Mr. Whipple as popular lectures many years ago, and were collected and published in 1849.
The last four articles are later productions of the author, and are first published together in this enlarged edition of his early work.
In a somewhat extended notice of Mr. Whipple's essays on the "Literature of the Age of Elizabeth" more than a year ago, we pointed out some of his excellences and defects as they appeared to us. Both are perhaps even more apparent in this book.
Its style is marked by that command of expression for which the author is always so remarkable, and is at the same time clear, pointed, and unaffected.
Yet the essays sometimes bear marks of the object for which they were written, and one cannot help wishing that the author had not been so evidently restricted in the materials he used and in the characteristics of his style by the necessity of their adaptation to the audience of lecture-goers to which they were addressed.
The distinctively critical essays are the best, and it is in literary criticism that Mr. Whipple is always most at home.