In regard to that purely mechanical portion of Dr. Bird's novel, which it would now be fashionable to denominate its style, we have very few observations to make. In general it is faultless. Occasionally we meet with a sentence ill-constructed—an inartificial adaptation of the end to the beginning of a paragraph—a circumlocutory mode of saying what might have been better said, if said with brevity—now and then with a pleonasm, as for example. "And if he wore a mask in his commerce with men, it was like that iron one of the Bastile, which when put on, was put on for life, and was at the same time of iron,"—not unfrequently with a bull proper, videlicet. "As he spoke there came into the den, eight men attired like the two first who were included in the number." But we repeat that upon the whole the style of the novel—if that may be called its style, which style is not—is at least equal to that of any American writer whatsoever.
In the style properly so called—that is to say in the prevailing tone and manner which give character and individuality to the book, we cannot bring ourselves to think that Dr. Bird has been equally fortunate. His subject appears always ready to fly away from him. He dallies with it continually—hovers incessantly round it, and about it—and not until driven to exertion by the necessity of bringing his volumes to a close, does he finally grasp it with any appearance of energy or good will. The Hawks of Hawk-Hollow is composed with great inequality of manner—at times forcible and manly—at times sinking into the merest childishness and imbecility. Some portions of the book, we surmise, were either not written by Dr. Bird, or were written by him in moments of the most utter mental exhaustion. On the other hand, the reader will not be disappointed, if he looks to find in the novel many—very many well sustained passages of great eloquence and beauty. We open the book at random, and one presents itself immediately to our notice. If Dr. Bird has a general manner at all—a question which we confess ourselves unable to decide—the passage which we are about to quote is a very fair, although perhaps rather too favorable specimen of that manner.
"Thus whiling away the fatigue of climbing over rocks, and creeping through thickets with a gay rattle of discourse, the black-eyed maiden dragged her companion along until they reached a place where the stream was contracted by the projection on the one bank of a huge mass of slaty rock, and on the other, by the protrusion of the roots of a gigantic plane-tree—the sycamore or button-wood of vulgar speech. Above them, and beyond the crag, the channel of the rivulet widened into a pool; and there was a plot of green turf betwixt the water and the hill, on the farther bank, whereon fairies, if such had ever made their way to the world of Twilight, might have loved to gambol under the light of the moon. A hill shut up the glen at its upper extremity; and it was hemmed in on the left, by the rocky and woody declivity over which the maidens had already passed. Over this, and just behind a black rounded shoulder that it thrust into the glen, a broad ray from the evening sun shot across the stream, and fell in a rich yellow flood over the vacant plot. There was something almost Arcadian in this little solitude; and if instead of two well-bred maidens perched upon the roots of the sycamore, on seats chosen with a due regard to the claims of their dresses, there had been a batch of country girls romping in the water, a passing Actæon might have dreamed of the piny Gargaphy, its running well fons tenui perlucidus unda—and the bright creatures of the mythic day that once animated the waters of that solitary grot. But the fairy and the wood-nymph are alike unknown in America. Poetic illusion has not yet consecrated her glens and fountains; her forests nod in uninvaded gloom, her rivers roll in unsanctified silence, and even her ridgy mountains lift up their blue tops in unphantomed solitude. Association sleeps, or it reverts only to the vague mysteries of speculation. Perhaps
| A restless Indian queen, Pale Marian with the braided hair, |
may wander at night by some highly favored spring; perhaps some tall and tawny hunter
In vestments for the chase arrayed,
may yet hunt the hart over certain distinguished ridges, or urge his barken canoe over some cypress-fringed pool; but all other places are left to the fancies of the utilitarian. A Greek would have invented a God to dwell under the watery arch of Niagara; an American is satisfied with a paper-mill clapped just above it."
Of the songs and other poetic pieces interspersed throughout the book, and sometimes not aptly or gracefully introduced, we have a very high opinion. Some of them are of rare merit and beauty. If Dr. Bird can always write thus, and we see no reason for supposing the contrary, he should at once, in the language of one with whom he is no doubt well acquainted,
Turn bard, and drop the play-wright and the novelist.
In evidence that we say nothing more than what is absolutely just; we insert here the little poem of The Whippoorwill.