There has not been issued for many a long month so good a number of this excellent and venerable Quarterly, as the one before us. It abounds in a good variety, alike of theme and style; and there is a manly, vigorous tone, and an independence of thought and expression, which we have not before observed, at least in so marked a degree. The number opens with a caustic and well-deserved critique upon the writings of James, the novelist; and we are the more gratified at this, because the defects of this romancer are the besetting sins of certain of our own novelists, who had at one time a fair degree of transient popularity. A lack of skill in the creation or accurate delineation of individual character, which, instead of representing men and women, are didactic exhibitions of the author himself, projected into various personages, and all bearing an unmistakable family resemblance—this it is that is at the bottom of the sudden decadence into which the writings of one or two of our more prolific romancers have fallen, past all redemption; and this is the great fault of Mr. James. ‘To be successful in the exact delineation of character,’ says the reviewer, ‘requires a rare combination of powers—a large heart and a comprehensive mind. It is the attribute of universality; it can be obtained only by outward as well as inward observation; not by that habit of intense brooding over individual consciousness, of making the individual mind the centre and the circumference of every thing, a habit which only makes of the writer an egotist, and limits the reach of his mind.’ Mr. James has certain types of character which he generally reproduces in each successive novel. His heroine is idealized into something which is neither spirit, nor flesh and blood. ‘His women, like his men, are ideas and feelings embodied; they are constructed, not created nor painted; built, not drawn. They do not stand boldly from the canvass.’ His rascal is an unmitigated rascal, intermingled with the machinery of his plot, and appearing regularly in every novel. ‘Mr. James is a great spendthrift of human life. The carelessness with which he slays, evinces the feebleness with which he conceives. If his personages were real to his own heart or imagination, he would not part with them so easily, nor kill them with such nonchalance.’ A very faithful description is given of Mr. James’s style; and it is one which will apply with equal force, though certainly in a subordinate case, to certain of our own novelists, whom the reader will readily recall, but whom it would be invidious perhaps to mention. ‘His style,’ says the reviewer, ‘has little flow and perspicuity, and no variety. It is usually heavy, lumbering, and monotonous. Half of the words seem in the way of the idea, and the latter appears not to have strength enough to clear the passage. Occasionally, a short, sharp sentence comes like a flash of lightning from the cloud of his verbiage, and relieves the twilight of his diction. There are but few felicitous phrases in his manifold volumes. He has hardly any of those happy combinations of words which stick fast to the memory, and do more than pages to express the author’s meaning. He has little command of expression. His imagery is common; and his manner of arranging a trite figure in a rich suit of verbiage, only makes its essential commonness and poverty more apparent. His style is not dotted over with any of those shining points, either of imagery or epigram, which illumine works of less popularity and pretension.’
The review of Mr. James’s works is followed by an excellent critique upon the poems of Mr. James Russell Lowell, which receive due commendation. There are some ‘rough truths’ in the reviewer’s opening remarks. ‘We have among us little companies of people, each of which ‘keeps its poet,’ and not content with that, proclaims from its small corner, with a most conceited air, that its poet is the man of the age.’ Instances are mentioned, closing with this irresistible climax: ‘One man thinks Cornelius Mathews has written the finest American poetry!’ In allusion to the whimsical peculiarities of Mr. Carlyle—a man of genius, learning, and humane tendencies—and their effect upon the servile tribe of imitators, the reviewer observes: ‘The study of German became an epidemic about the time that Carlyle broke out; the two disorders aggravated each other, and ran through all the stages incident to literary affectation, until they assumed their worst form, and common sense breathed its last, as the ‘Orphic Sayings’ came; those most unmeaning and witless effusions—we cannot say of the brain, for the smallest modicum of brains would have rendered their appearance an impossibility—but of mere intellectual inanity.’ The American Euphuists, being possessed of the demon of affectation, strive to set themselves apart from the common herd, imagine that they are inhabitants of a sublimated ether, and look down with pitying contempt on all who profess an inability to detect a meaning in their vapid and mystical jargon. ‘These be truths;’ and our readers will bear us witness that months ago, with but little variation of terms, we promulgated them in these pages.
There is an excellent paper upon the ‘Forest Lands and the Timber Trade of Maine;’ it is full of interest, despite the nature of its general theme. The ‘Boundary Question’ did not indicate the first usurpations of the British in Maine. It was the acts of parliament that forbade the use of water-falls, the erecting of machinery, of looms and spindles, and the working of wood and iron; that set the king’s arrow upon trees that rotted in the forest; that shut out markets for boards and fish, and seized sugar and molasses, and the vessels in which these articles were carried; and that defined the limitless ocean as but a narrow pathway to such of the lands that it embosoms as wore the British flag; it was these restrictions, to release which the revolution was created. The articles upon the various ‘Theories of Storms,’ and ‘The Recent Contest in Rhode-Island,’ we have not found leisure from pressing avocations to peruse. The paper on ‘Architecture in the United States’ is from the pen of one who ‘knows whereof he writes;’ and he has not been sparing of deserved satire upon the sad and ridiculous mistakes of those among us who are miscalled architects. High praise is awarded to our Trinity Church, now in progress of erection. ‘In size, in the delicacy and propriety of its decoration, and in the beauty of its general effect, it surpasses any church erected in England since the revival of the pointed style.’ In a notice of the ‘Writings of Miss Bremer,’ Mary Howitt ‘suffers some,’ on account of a certain hysteric preface of hers to a translation of one of the Swedish lady’s productions, in which she complains of the American translations from this popular writer. Among the ‘Critical Notices’ which compose the last article in the Review, is a critique upon Mr. Cornelius Mathews’s ‘Writings,’ including his poem on ‘Man in his Various Aspects,’ which embodies the opinions we have ourselves expressed in relation to them. Since the unfounded charge of being ‘actuated by private pique,’ which was brought against us by the author, cannot be assumed against the North American Review, we trust that our ‘complainant’ will not object that we fortify our own estimate of his literary merits by grave authority. The following is an extract:
Mr. Mathews has shown a marvellous skill in failing, each failure being more complete than the last. His comedy of ‘The Politicians’ is ‘the most lamentable comedy;’ and the reader exclaims, with Hippolyta, ‘This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.’ The ‘Career of Puffer Hopkins’ is an elaborately bad imitation of Dickens; and must be ranked in fiction where ‘The Politicians’ stands in the drama. It aims at being comical, and satirical upon the times. The author studies hard to portray the motley characters which move before the observer in a large city; but he has not enough of the vision and the faculty divine, to make them more than melancholy ghosts of what they profess to be. The attempts at humor are inexpressibly dismal; the burlesque overpowers the most determined reader, by its leaden dulness. The style is ingeniously tasteless and feeble. He who has read it through can do or dare any thing. Mr. Mathews suffers from several erroneous opinions. He seems to think that literary elegance consists in the very qualities which make elegance impossible. Simplicity and directness of language he abominates. When he has an idea to express, he aims, apparently, to convert it into a riddle, by inventing the most forced, unnatural, and distorted expressions. If the thing can be obscured, he is sure to obscure it. He seems to say to the reader, ‘Can you guess? do you give it up?’ But then, less obliging than the maker of charades, he leaves the puzzled victim without an explanation at last. He studies a singularity of phrase at once crabbed and finical, and overloads his pages with far-fetched epithets, that are at once harsh and unmeaning. He seems to have been told that he has wit and humor, and—strange delusion!—to believe it. He writes as if he imagined that he possessed the inventive power: never was a greater mistake. These qualities and these mistakes make his prose writings unreadable and intolerable, at least all the later ones. But when to the charms of his ordinary style are added the attractions of verse, then the sense aches with the combined and heightened beauties. The present volume exaggerates all his literary vices. The plan of these poems is very well; if executed with taste and power, the volume would have been interesting. As it is, we have here and there a good line, a striking figure, or a bold expression. But most of the poems are deformed by harshness of versification, feebleness of thought, and every species of bad writing. Compounded words, never seen before, and impossible to be pronounced, epithets detailed on service for which they are wholly unfit, figures that illustrate nothing but their own absurdity, and rhymes that any common book would die of, astonish the reader on every page. Had the poet purposely aimed to twist the English language into every conceivable form of awkwardness; had he designed to illustrate, for the use of beginners, every possible defect and every positive fault of diction; his success in accomplishing the object could not have been more complete.’
We annex a few of the ‘original’ beauties which the reviewer has selected from Mr. Mathews’s poem. Two or three of them, we perceive, are identical with those which we ourselves selected from that luminous effort of the mind and the imagination:
‘We had marked many characteristic passages in the present volume, to illustrate the observations we have felt called on to make. But we have space only for a few lines. In the first poem, besides many other absurdities of thought as well as expression, occurs this line:
‘Strides he the globe, or CANVASS-TENTS the sea.’
Who ever heard of the verb to canvass-tent? To canvass-back the sea would be much more rational.
In the second poem we find this luminous line:
‘Clear as the clear, round midnight at its full,’
which must be very clear indeed.
What can be the meaning of the following words in the ‘Teacher?’
‘Whose eyes cry light through all its dawning void.’
‘Fierce revolutions rush in WILD-ORBED haste.’
In the ‘Mechanic,’ the following very intelligible direction is given to the architect:
‘In the first Builder’s gracious spirit work,
Through, hall, through enginery, and TEMPLES MEEK,
In grandeur towered, or lapsing beauty-sleek,
Let order and creative fitness shine.’
In the ‘Merchant,’ the poet affirms:
‘Undimmed the man should through the trader shine.
And show the soul UNBABIED by his craft.’
This can only mean, that the soul of the trader ought not to be supplied with babies by his craft.
The ‘Sculptor’ ends with this prediction:
‘And up shall spring through all the BROAD-SET land,
The FAIR WHITE PEOPLE of thy love unnumbered.’
In the ‘Journalist,’ we find the following directions to the printer:
‘Hell not the quiet of a Chosen Land,
Thou grimy man over thine engine bending.’
Hell, as a common noun, is a sufficiently uncomfortable idea; but when converted into an active verb, it becomes positively alarming.
The poet thus advises ‘The Masses:’
‘In vast assemblies calm, let order rule,
And every shout a cadence owning,
Make musical the vexed winds moaning,
And be as little children at a singing-school.’
And the ‘Reformer’ is told to
‘Seize by its horns the shaggy Past,
Full of uncleanness.’
A Practical Treatise on Midwifery. By M. Chailly, M. D., Professor of Midwifery, etc., etc. With two hundred and sixteen wood-cuts. Translated from the French, and edited by Dr. Gunning S. Bedford, of the University of New-York. In one volume. pp. 530. Harper And Brothers.
This work comes to us under the fairest auspices. The author, M. Chailly, is a distinguished Parisian lecturer on Obstetrics, a pupil of the eminent Paul Dubois, of the University of Paris, and generally recognized as the exponent of the views of that celebrated accoucheur. By all who are familiar (and who of the medical world is not?) with the high reputation of Dubois for sound medical philosophy and unbounded practical knowledge, it has been long regretted that the just opinions he so eloquently promulgates in the lecture-room have never assumed the diffusible shape of a printed book. M. Chailly, in the work before us, supplies us with that which has been so much desired, and which Prof. Dubois himself, from some cause not easily appreciated, has so long withheld from the world. The Parisian board of public instruction has moreover stamped the work of M. Chailly with their approbation, and fixed it as the standard text-book of the French medical schools. This is a promise of excellence which a diligent perusal of the work will fully confirm. Professor Bedford, the American translator, who has performed his duty as might be expected from his high character and prominent position, as Professor of the flourishing medical school of the University of New-York, felt the want of a good text-book for the student, and a sound practical guide for the physician, and has exhibited a sound judgment in this selection to supply that want. The work of Velpeau, hitherto unquestionably the most popular book with the medical profession, is diffuse and speculative. The present work is direct, concise, and complete. Dr. Bedford has enriched the original with copious notes, the result of his own extensive experience and observation. The publishers have performed their duty well, in presenting the work in a handsome library form; and it is only the very extensive business facilities of the Messrs. Harpers that could afford so full and well illustrated a scientific book at so reasonable a price.
The Literary Remains of the Late Willis Gaylord Clark: including the ‘Ollapodiana’ papers, ‘The Spirit of Life,’ and a choice Selection from his Miscellaneous Prose and Poetical Writings. With a Memoir of the Author. Edited by Lewis Gaylord Clark. Complete in five Numbers of ninety-six pages each. New-York: Burgess, Stringer and Company.
It does not become us, perhaps, to enlarge upon the merits of this work, the character of which is known to many of our readers. As there are other many of them, however, who may not be conversant with much of the prose which makes up a large portion of its contents—having become subscribers to this Magazine since the ‘Ollapodiana’ papers and the other prose miscellanies appeared in its pages—we shall venture to present a few extracts, and to preface them with the following remarks of the able Editor of the United States Gazette, of Philadelphia, upon the writer’s merits; praise, we may add, which has been confirmed by the kindred commendation of almost every journal in the Union: ‘Messrs. Burgess, Stringer and Company, of New-York, have commenced the publication, in a series of numbers, of the Literary Remains of Willis Gaylord Clark. The first number has been for some days upon our table, and after a biographical notice of the author, contains a portion of the ‘Ollapodiana,’ those admirable papers furnished for the Knickerbocker. Almost every body, who read five years ago, knows the beauties of Clark’s composition. They are permanent beauties; beauties that always are to be found by those who ever had taste to admire them. They are not dependant upon a jingle of words for temporary popularity; they appeal from the heart to the heart, in language that knows no variation of time. They express sentiments that are permanent, feelings common to mankind; and those who would profit by a delicate delineation of the affections of the human heart, will love the poetry of Clark. Those who would have a broader seal set upon manners, and the peculiarities of the mind set forth in pleasant grotesqueness, will smile at the ‘Ollapodiana.’ But all will profit by all; and we regard it as a literary obligation conferred upon the age, and carrying with it a moral obligation also, to multiply the copies of such writings as Clark prepared. We express not our feelings, when we write of Clark as an author. There are some of us who knew his heart better than he did, and who have never forgotten his worth. These monuments, that are erected to his fame from his own works, like the trophies of victory, moulded to a triumphal pillar, denote public respect. Individual feeling loves a silent flow, that is constant and hearty.’