For the Southern Literary Messenger.
GENERAL WARREN.
STORIES ABOUT GENERAL WARREN—By a Lady of Boston, 1835, pp. 112, 12mo.
The sneers of those grown up readers,—who may choose to sneer at a review of so very juvenile a book as this, we brave, for the sake of bringing it, and its subject, somewhat into notice—pointing out some phraseological errors—doing justice to its merits—and, above all, freshening the memories, if not informing the minds, of the less fastidious among our countrymen, as to a few of the incidents preceding and attending the commencement of that great struggle, of which the cherished remembrance conduces so much to preserve in American bosoms a catholic, American, liberty-loving spirit. These incidents will be found naturally to imbody themselves in a brief account of the life of General Warren, drawn chiefly from the volume above mentioned. Those who may incline to despise either so simple a book, or a narrative of (to them) such trite facts, as these of which we shall speak, are probably not aware how shallow and narrow is the knowledge existing through the country, and even in some minds that claim to be considered as enlightened, with regard to our own history. "Mr. President!"—recently, at a public dinner in Virginia, vociferated a young orator of the Milesian school—a lawyer, we took him to be—"Mr. President! I give you, sir, the memory of the gallant General Warren, who fell at the battle of LEXINGTON!" And but a few months before, a friend as dear to us as ourselves, and whose age and opportunities should certainly have made him know better, confounded Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia in the times of Charles I and II, with Norborne Berkeley, Lord Botetourt, viceroy of George III, in 1769 and 1770! It would not surprise us, to hear a lawyer or a physician—still less a gentleman at large—talk of the burning of Charleston as simultaneous with the battle of Sullivan's Island, because Charlestown burned while the battle of Bunker Hill was fighting—as "John Bull in America" passes in half an hour from Boston, where the folk make wooden nutmegs, roast witches, and bake pumpkin pies, into Charleston, where they gouge and stab, drink mint juleps, eat young negroes, and feed old ones upon cotton seed.
The narrative before us is couched in a dialogue, between a mother and her two children; and, being obviously designed for gentlemen and ladies not much higher than mamma's rocking chair, has frequently an infantine simplicity of style, that makes us marvel at our own moral courage, in daring to serve up such a baby's mess. Convinced, however, that children's reading may afford both amusement and instruction to grown people, (witness "Early Lessons," "Frank," "The Parent's Assistant," "Sandford and Merton," and "Evenings at Home," cum pluribus aliis;) believing, at any rate, that among the palates for which it is our duty to cater, there are some youthful ones to which this dish may be both pleasant and useful; hoping, too, that by having her faults of composition noted, the authoress may be induced to cure, or "others in like cases offending" be moved to shun them, we make the venture. Indeed, not only the book's childishness of style, but many offences far more atrocious in a critic's eyes—sins against grammar, idiom, and good taste—are in great part redeemed by the good sense and justness of its reflections, the interesting tenor of its incidents, and the virtuous glow it is calculated to kindle. The sins are very many. "Lay," used for "lie," is wholly unwarranted—scarcely palliated—even by the example of Byron, in the Fourth Canto itself: for he was compelled by duress of rhyme; a coercion, which the most tuneful and the most dissonant are alike powerless to resist. "Mr. Warren, the father of Joseph, while walking round his orchard to see if every thing was in good order, as he was looking over the trees, he perceived," &c. Here is a nominative without any verb. There is a four or five fold vice in the second member of the following sentence, in which, as it stands, the writer may be defied to show a meaning: "It often happens that a mother is left with a family of young children, and is obliged to bring them up without the controlling power of a father's care; it is therefore the duty of every female so to educate her own mind, and that of her daughters, as to enable her, if she should be placed in this responsible situation, to be able to guide aright the minds of those under her care." Enable her to be able! Educate her own mind! and that of her daughters! Are they to be supposed to have but one mind among them, as the Sirens had but one tooth? The use of educate for train, is a match for the Frenchman's blunder, who, finding in the Dictionary that to press means to squeeze, politely begged leave to squeeze a lady to sing. "Enable HER." Enable whom? Why herself and her daughters: and she should have said so. Never, surely, was prosing, bona fide, printed prosing, to so little purpose. Again: "A mother should always possess ... a firm principle of action." Does she need but one firm principle of action? If so, it is to be hoped the next edition will say what that one is; for it must be valuable. A common blunder in the times of the infinitive mood, occurs repeatedly in this book: "How I should have admired to have gone to see her!" "It would have been a pity for us to have followed his example, and thus have lessened," &c.—"must have ardently desired to have been present"—"must have wished very much to have seen," &c. We cannot see the propriety of using the word "admired," as it is in one of these quotations. "Tell us if he did get in, and how he contrived to?" We protest against this fashion which our Yankee brethren are introducing, of making to, which is but the sign of the infinitive, stand for the infinitive itself. This is one of the few cases, in which we are for going the whole. "He began to practice"—"I know it was not him"—"he whom I told you was the first one"—"to respect, was added admiration and love"—"this tax bore very heavy"—"soldiers which"—"your country has much to hope from you, both in their counsels and in the field." These errors, a very moderate skill in orthography and syntax would have sufficed to avoid. Such a vulgarism as "nowadays," or such provincialisms as "pay one single copper," and "walked back and forth the room," (meaning to and fro, or backwards and forwards in the room) would not have occurred, if the author had remembered, that the simplicity which suits children's minds, is altogether different from vulgarity. There is such a thing as neat and graceful simplicity in writing, as well as in dress and manners. "They had contemplated making some attack on the British, or at least to endeavor to destroy their shipping." Contemplated to destroy! We will not further pursue this unwelcome task; pausing, short of the middle of the book, and having already passed over several faults without animadversion. Let the author be entreated to get the aid of some friend who is master (if she is not mistress) of grammar and taste enough, to reform these and the other errors of her little work, and then give us a new edition, calling in all the copies of the first, that are within her reach.—And now to our tale.
JOSEPH WARREN was born in 1741, in the village of Roxbury, one or two miles south from Boston, Mass. His father, a rich farmer, inhabited a house, the ruins of which are still visible; and was famous for raising the best fruit in that neighborhood. He was killed by a fall from one of his own apple trees, leaving a widow and four sons, of whom Joseph, the eldest, was 16, and John, the youngest, was 4 years old. This excellent woman appears to have much resembled the mother of Washington, in the skill and care with which she infused generous sentiments and virtuous principles into the bosoms of her children: and she reaped almost as richly as Mrs. Washington, the fruits of her labors. Her sons passed through life, all honored and loved, and more than one of them distinguished. Her nature seems to have had more of amiable softness than Mrs. Washington's; who, it must be confessed, blended something of the sternness with the purity and nobleness of a Spartan matron. Mrs. Warren's door was always open for deeds of hospitality and neighborly kindness. It is not easy to imagine a lovelier scene than one paragraph presents, of the evening of a well spent life, still warmed and brightened by the benign spirit, which had been the sun of that life's long day.
"In her old age, when her own children had left her fireside, it was one of her dearest pleasures to gather a group of their children, or of the children of others around her. She did all in her power to promote their enjoyment, and her benevolent smile was always ready to encourage them. On Thanksgiving-day,1 she depended on having all her children and grand children with her; and until she was 80 years of age, she herself made the pies with which the table was loaded! Not satisfied with feasting them to their heart's content while they were with her, she always had some nice great pies ready for them to take home with them."
1 Thanksgiving-day is in New England, what Christmas is in the Southern States and England. It is always in November, on a day fixed by Proclamation of the Governor of each State, in each year. Christmas, from the anti-Catholic zeal of the Puritan Pilgrims, is almost entirely neglected; being, with all its train of quips, cranks, gambols and mince-pies, thought to savor too strongly of popery.
Joseph's education, till his fourteenth year, was at the public school in Roxbury; one of those common schools, which, from the earliest times of New England, have been planting and nurturing in her soil the seeds and shoots of virtue and freedom. Even in boyhood, our hero was manly, fearless and generous: always taking the part of his weaker school-fellows against a strong oppressor—always the
| "village Hampden, that with dauntless breast, The little tyrant of his fields withstood." |