9 The Last Days of Pompeii: By the Author of Pelham, Eugene Aram, England, and the English, &c. 2 vols. 12mo. New York: 1834. Harper and Brothers.
While we have never failed to acknowledge and applaud the brilliant imagination and the eloquent and fascinating style of Mr. E. L. Bulwer, we have never feared to assert that he was a sophist in ethics and a libertine in love, and that effect was apparently the only law which influenced his mind or guided his pen. Better disguised, but not less pernicious in principle and evil in action than the Tom Jones and Count Fathom and Zeluco of Fielding, Smollett and Moore, his characters not only exist in, but actually create an atmosphere of impurity which infects the very hearts of his admirers. He invests the seducer with irresistible attractions, and paints the highwayman and the murderer as examples for imitation. But even in the execution of his execrable purposes, he is not original either in his plots or his sentiments. The old Portuguese Jew Spinoza and his disciples Hobbes, Toland, Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke have abundantly supplied him with infidel arguments; and the profligate courtiers of Charles the Second have contributed their licentious stratagems and impure dialogues to augment the claims and heighten the charms of his coxcombs, libertines and menslayers. Mr. Bulwer has read much and skillfully appropriated, without acknowledgment, all that has suited his designs. He has artfully clothed the lofty thoughts of others in his own brilliant garb, and enjoyed the renown of a powerful writer and profound thinker, when he was little more than an adroit and manoeuvering plagiary. This we long since perceived, and therefore denied his claims to a high order of genius, though we readily accorded to him the possession of much curious knowledge and a felicitous use of language. We never imagined that the labors of an unrewarded and little regarded American could be deemed by the proud, soi-disant highborn, and affluent Mr. Bulwer as worthy of his unquestioning appropriation. We fancied that so deep a scholar would continue to dig for treasures in ancient and recondite literature, and pass triumphantly over the obscure productions of a poor cisatlantic. But we erred. As a member of the British Parliament, Mr. Bulwer is accustomed to the creation of laws; and he seems to have made one expressly for his own profit and pleasure—namely, the law of literary lawlessness. We knew that he was well content to demand high prices for his immoral novels from his American publishers; but, until this time, we were not aware that he considered any thing but gold worth receiving or plundering from Yankeeland. With his usual tact, he has managed to secure, in no slight degree, from our labors, that which those labors failed utterly to receive from our unlettered countrymen; and it is our present purpose to demand back our own thoughts, which are our property and the heritage of our children.
It is now three years since 'The Last Night of Pompeii' was written and published; and, among other English men of letters, a copy of that poem with a letter, which was never answered, was sent to Mr. Bulwer, who was, at that time, the editor of the London New Monthly Magazine. Affliction fell heavily on our heart during the spring of 1832, and, becoming indifferent to poetic fame and every thing not involved in our bereavement, we bestowed no thought upon the poem or its reception. Time has passed on; we have been intensely occupied with other concerns, and have not been anxious about it since. The apathy, if not contempt, with which American poets have ever been treated, has driven Percival into solitude, Bryant and Prentice into politics, Whittier into abolition schemes, Pierpoint into phrenological experiments, and all others far away from the barren realm of Parnassus. But lo! the poem, which was printed by hardwon subscription and left unwelcomed but by a few cheerful voices, when transmuted into a novel by Bulwer, becomes a brilliant gem, and illumines the patriotic hearts and clear understandings of the whole Western World! Who is a Yankee poet that he should be honoured? but to whom is the English Bulwer unknown? We live, however—thanks be to Providence! to claim our own and expose all smugglers, though the redrover Saxon seems to think that the Atlantic is a very broad ocean, and that the democrats of the West are very little capable of appreciating any compositions but his own.
Had Mr. Bulwer confined himself to the almost literal adoption of our title, or had certain passages in his novel betrayed even great resemblances to others in our poem, we should have said that the coincidences were somewhat remarkable, and then dismissed the matter from our thoughts. Many examples in literary history might be presented to prove that men may think and describe alike without plagiarism, but, when the incidents and descriptions are as nearly identical as prose and poetry can well be, we cannot deduce the charitable conclusion that the very strong likeness is accidental. Our readers shall judge whether, in this case, it is so.
The characters in the poem are few—in the novel many—but, in both, the whole interest depends on the adventures of two lovers. In the poem these lovers are Pansa and Mariamne, a Roman decurion and a captive Jewish maiden, both Christians; in the novel they are Glaucus and Ione, Greeks and pagans. With us, Diomede was the prætor and Pansa the victim; with Bulwer, the former is a rich merchant, and the latter, ædile of Pompeii. Here, then, there is no similarity, nor is there but one deserving a remark, until Arbaces—an Eugene Aram antiquated—one of Bulwer's learned, wise and soliloquizing villains—seduces Ione to his mansion of iniquity. The first coincidence, to which we refer, is the scene of the sacrifice,10 and the oracular response. The description in the novel reads thus:
"The aruspices inspected the entrails."—"It was then that a dead silence fell over the whispering crowd, and the priests gathering around the cella, another priest, naked save by a cincture round the middle, rushed forward, and dancing with wild gestures, implored an answer from the goddess."—"A low murmuring noise was heard within the body of the statue; thrice the head moved, and the lips parted, and then a hollow voice uttered these mystic words:
| "There are waves like chargers that meet and glow, There are graves ready wrought in the rocks below, On the brow of the Future the dangers lower, But blessed are your barks in the fearful hour." |
10 Vol. i. p. 42.
That in the poem is as follows—the oracle preceding the description of its effect upon the superstitious multitude.
| "The aruspices proclaimed the prodigies. 'The entrails palpitate—the liver's lobes Are withered, and the heart hath shrivelled up!' Groans rose from living surges round; yet loud The High Priest uttered—'Lay them on the fire!' 'Twas done; and wine and oil poured amply o'er, And still the sacrificer wildly cried— 'Woe unto all! the wandering fires hiss up Through the black vapors—lapping o'er the flesh They burn not, but abandon! ashes fill The temple, whirled upon the wind that waves'" etc. |
| The Oracle. |
| "'Ye shall pass o'er the Tyrrhene sea in ships Laden with virgins, gems and gods, and spoils Of a dismembered empire, and a cloud Of light shall radiate your ocean path!' Breathes not the soul of mystery in this?" "And the prostrated multitudes, like woods Hung with the leaves of autumn, stirred; then fell A silence when the heart was heard—a pause— When ardent hope became an agony; And parted lips and panting pulses—eyes Wild with their watchings, brows with beaded dews Of expectation chilled and fevered—all The shaken and half lifted frame—declared The moment of the oracle had come! A sceptre to the hand of Isis leapt And waved; and then the deep voice of the priest Uttered the maiden's answer, and the fall Of many quickened steps like whispers pass'd Along the columned aisles and vestibule." |