Th' invisible rain did ever sing
A silver music on the mossy lawn.
It is lucky for Witches and Naiads that they are not subject to rheumatism.”
It will not be difficult to foretell, from the general air of the narration (as observed up to this date) in what manner Mr. Slingsby will think it incumbent upon him to wind it up. He will give it a melo-dramatic finale? Most assuredly. The lady is adventurous, and has walked over a narrow ledge, which has broken with her weight. The guide seizes Mr. Slingsby by the shoulder. He turns—and “what is his horror” at beholding Miss —— standing far in behind the sheet, upon the last visible point of rock, with the water pouring over her in torrents, and a “gulf of foam” between the lady and the gentleman, which the gentleman “can in no way understand how she has passed over.” This gulf is six feet across, and, of course, says Mr. Slingsby, “it was impossible to jump it.” [We have jumped one and twenty feet six inches ourselves, but then we are no Mr. Slingsby, and never could make a joke about Niagara.] That gentleman does not jump, but he does something nevertheless. He “fixes his eyes upon the lovely form standing like a spirit in the misty shroud of the spray,” and endeavors “to sustain her upon her dangerous foot-hold—by the intensity of his gaze.” He may possibly, however, with this end in view, have made use of an eye-glass.
There being nothing better to be done, the guide having absconded, and the lady being upon the eve of destruction, our friend Job, and his legs, are brought into requisition. He stands upon one edge of “the foaming gulf,” and stretches himself across to the other. Miss —— is so kind as to make use of him as a bridge. The guide returns with a rope, pulls up the bridge by means of a running-noose around one of its legs—and the “Visit to Niagara” terminates with an Io Pean in honor of the “foaming gulf,” the “supernatural strength” of Mr. Smith, and the “intensity of the gaze” of the devoted Mr. Slingsby.
The paper of which we have just given an outline will afford a very fair conception of the usual merits and demerits of the sketches of Mr. Willis. Here are many comparatively long passages of a force, or delicacy, or beauty—shall we say unsurpassed by any similar passages in any writer of English? We shall not say too much if we do. The bantering humor interspersed is of the best order. Who can read the endeavor (quoted above) of Mr. Slingsby to get Mr. Smith to his breakfast, without feeling at once impressed with a keen sense of the mingled wit, broad drollery, dramatic effect, and gentlemanly insouciance of the whole affair? The final question of Mr. S. (after amusing his friend with the idea of a junction, some hundred years hence, between Ontario and Erie)—“Do you intend to wait and see it, or will you come to breakfast?”—is inimitably brought about—very quiet, and very quizzical. The catastrophe of the two waiters, and the arrival in a great rage, but with a good appetite, of Mr. Smith, is a palpable hit not to be attained, and not to be appreciated by the rabble. Of force, we have abundant specimens in such sentences, as “Job flounced up, like a snake touched with a torpedo, and sprang to the window”—“I can imagine the surprise of the gentle element, after sleeping away a se'nnight of moonlight in the peaceful bosom of Lake Erie, at finding itself of a sudden in such a coil”—or “As far down towards Lake Ontario as the eye can reach, the immense volumes of water rise like huge monsters to the light, boiling and flashing out in rings of foam, with an appearance of vexation and rage that I have seen in no other cataract of the world.” The little sentence, “Whatever sister of Arethusa inhabits there, we could but congratulate her upon the beauty of her abode,” is, among many other similar things, sufficient evidence of a rare delicacy of expression—and we feel at once that writer to be a poet—an Idealist—who tells us “that Miss —— in her uncouth habiliments, looked like a fairy in disguise,” and that the sheet of Niagara is “what a child might imagine the arch of the sky to be where it bends over the edge of the horizon.”
The minor defects are few. Among these few it is sufficient to specify a too frequent allusion to the “axis of the world,” and the absurdities, gravely narrated, which go to make up the catastrophe of the sketch, in the rescue of the young lady. Upon the whole, we may speak of the mere wording as in every respect worthy of a man of taste and a scholar. With the exception of “soubriquet,” written for sobriquet, (a very common error) it would be difficult to find any verbal fault, in the present instance, to which a critic would be pardoned for alluding.
But the whole narrative is disfigured, and indeed utterly ruined, by the grievous sin of affectation. It is this sin, and not, we are convinced, any imbecility in the conceptions of Mr. Willis, (with our readers' leave we will drop Mr. Slingsby) which has beguiled him into the egregious folly of writing a long article, in a jocular manner, about the cataract of Niagara. He may say, a pleasant sketch is intended, no more—and that the intention is fulfilled. But the utter want of keeping, consequent upon handling such subject in such manner, is sufficient to convince us at a glance, that his intention, even such as it is, is not, in any due degree, fulfilled. The question is not whether the thing pleases, (one who writes as well as Mr. Willis will please in spite of a thousand faults,) but whether, if otherwise handled, it might not have pleased the more. While laughing at the mystification of our friend Job, we are in no proper frame of mind for the grandeur of the fall—and while absorbed in the majesty of the monarch of cataracts, we are aware of an oppressive revulsion of feeling if disturbed for the absurd fripperies and frivolities, or the still more absurd melo-dramatic adventures, of the fop and the woman of fashion. This matter is too obvious for denial. A writer, then, who, in despite of common sense, shall be continually endeavoring to reconcile these obstinate oils and waters of the soul, will be continually laboring at a disadvantage—and this latter point, neglected by gentlemen who should know better, is a point to which the most dunder-headed artizan would not forget to give a proper attention in the making of a pair of breeches, or the building of a pig-stye. If all ethics be not at fault, those mental impressions, however vivid, will be necessarily evanescent, which are deficient in unity. In a word, it may safely be asserted, that a writer neglectful of the totality of effect, will fall short of his end, if that end be a remembrance in the “language of his land.” Compositions grossly failing in this essential, have been habitually discharged from the memory of man. And in this essential Mr. Willis invariably fails—we should rather say, this essential Mr. Willis invariably disregards. He seems especially to have fallen into that heresy (now common in literary, although deduced from mere fashionable life) which would brand as a species of Rosa-Matilda-ism any sustained and unmingled severity of sentiment. Never, surely, in whatever light we regard it, was a heresy more untenable. When applied to the brief essay, or short tale, it is ridiculous—and Mr. Willis should remember that he is an essayist, or nothing.
In the particular here pointed out, we have accused our author of affectation. It is a sin of which the public loudly accuse him, and in general terms. When we say the accusation is just, we wish to be understood as speaking positively. In a relative view, the case is different. Mr. Willis is not a jot more entitled to be called “affected,” than nine-tenths of the gentlemen who are in the habit of so calling him—than nine-tenths of the most popular writers in our land. But his affectation, differing from the tone of their own, is in some measure more readily perceptible. It is, however, a positive folly, no doubt, which induces so clever a writer so frequently to disclaim all knowledge of geography and “figures”—to speak bad French in preference to good English—to talk about Niagara being “as fine a thing as I have seen in my travels,” and about having “pic-nic'd from the Simplegades westward”—to think “gave upon the bay” a forcible phrase, merely because it is a Gallicism—to begin a quotation with “Saith well an American poet,” &c. &c.—to delight in such inversions as “She looked loveliest when driving, did Blanche Carroll”—to inform us that “he never looks back in composition,” and to make use of such pretty little expressions on his title-pages as Pencillings by the Way, and Inklings of Adventure.
Niagara is by no means the best of the sketches before us—it may, very possibly, be the worst. None of them are entitled to the merit of plot. And indeed it appears an idiosyncrasy in Mr. Willis that he has little feeling for incident. In an exceedingly delicate vein of sentiment he is peculiarly at home. Edith Linsey is thus, we think, the happiest effort of his pen. Here is indeed some very beautiful writing. The imitation of Elia is not only an exquisite imitation, but evinces a close affinity of intellect between the imitator and the imitated. We are quite sure no man in America can, more fully than Mr. Willis, enter into the soul of Charles Lamb. In a graceful badinage our author pre-eminently excels. To originality he has little claim—his manner—the touchstone of the essayist—is not peculiarly his own. His scholarship is sufficient and available—his command of language very great. In a vigorous figurative expression—a quality seldom allowed him—he has indeed few equals. As this point is disputed, we will adduce from the volumes before us one or two instances, more to show what we mean by vigor of expression, than to prove our position by a number of quotations.
“You ask, in England, who has the privilege of this water?—or you say of an oak, that it stood in such a man's time; but with us water is an element unclaimed and unrented, and a tree dabbles in the clouds as they go over, and is like a great idiot, without soul or responsibility.”