'Undimmed the man should through the trader shine,
And show the soul unbabied by his craft.'
'Next comes the soldier,' to whom Mr. Mathews thus addresses himself:
'With grounded arms, and silent as the mountains,
Pause for thy quarrel at the marbled sea.'
'Marbled sea' is good; as good as 'the mobled queen.' It might perhaps assist the effect a little, if the reader knew what it meant. Possibly the writer knows; yet we doubt it. The next stanza presents a cloudy vision of the sublime obscure:
'Though sleeps the war-blade in the amorous sheath,
And the dumb cannon stretches at his leisure—
When strikes the shore a hostile foot—out-breathe
Ye grim, loud guns—ye fierce swords work your pleasure!
And sternly, in your stubborn socket set,
For life or death—your hilt upon the stedfast land,
Your glance upon the foe, thou sure-set bayonet,
Firm 'gainst a world's shock in your fastness stand!'
'The statesman' is not less felicitously 'touched off' than the soldier:
'Deeper to feel, than quickly to express,
And then alone in the consummate act;
Reaps not the ocean, nor the free air tills,
But keeps within his own peculiar tract;
Confirms the State in all its needful right,
Nor strives to draw within its general bound;
For gain or loss, for glory or distress,
The rich man's hoard, the poor man's patchy ground.'
'Hold, enough!' doubtless exclaims the reader. Yet could we go on to the end of the volume with just such 'poetry' as this. We must ask the farther attention of 'the curious' to be directed to the work itself, while we proceed to glance for a moment at the production last cited at the head of this notice.
The swelling prelude to 'The Career of Puffer Hopkins' is kindred in assumption and manner with the preface to the 'Comedy,' to which we have already adverted. 'Cervantes, Smollet, Fielding, and Scott, to say nothing of more recent examples,' are modestly invoked, to show that the author cannot justly be charged with caricaturing. We yield the point, without the examples. A caricature always bears some resemblance to an original; but Mr. Mathews's characters have no originals. They are in no respect vraisemblant. Take his whole catalogue of names, (in themselves so 'funny!') his 'Hobbleshank,' 'Piddleton Bloater,' 'Mr. Gallipot,' 'Mr. Blinker,' 'Mr. Fishblaat,' 'Attorney Pudlin,' 'Mr. Fyler Close,' 'Alderman Punchwind,' 'Mr. Shirks,' 'Counsellor Blast,' 'Dr. Mash,' 'Mr. Bust,' 'Mr. Flabby,' etc.; analyze them, if possible, and tell us if any one of them ever had any thing like a counterpart in 'the heavens above, in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth?' Are they any more distinctive, internally, than 'the pie-faced man,' or the man 'with features like a dried codfish suddenly animated,' externally? 'Not a jot, not a jot,' will be the reply of every one who attentively scans them. The death of 'Fob' partakes in a good degree of the pathetic, and justifies the counsel which we gave the writer in our notice of 'The Motley Book.' It is however as evidently suggested by kindred scenes in the writings of Dickens, as is the writer's raven and coffin-maker's apprentice. We have not the space, had we either the leisure or the inclination, to attempt a notice in detail of 'Puffer Hopkins.' We say 'attempt,' because it defies criticism. It has neither plot nor counterplot; neither head nor tail. Memory, it has been well said, is the best of critics; but we doubt if there be a scene or part of a scene, in the entire work, that could be segregated and recalled by the recollection of the reader. Aimless grotesqueness; the most laborious yet futile endeavors after wit; and a constant unsuccessful straining for effect; are its prominent characteristics. Take up the book, reader, open it any where, and peruse two pages; and if you do not acquit us entirely of undue depreciation in this verdict, place no faith hereafter in our literary judgment. Let us open it at random for an illustrative passage or two. In the following, Puffer (after receiving a lecture on political speech-making, in which among other things he is told, to 'roll his eye-balls back under the lid, and smell of the chandelier, though the odor isn't pleasant!') is thus further instructed: