In the second volume, our hero again visits “the Oaks,” and while standing by the bed side of his dying sister, is informed that Proctor, with a company of soldiers, has arrived; he refuses to fly at first, but at last escapes from the window, is pursued, and nearly taken, but escapes, and the next moment meets Col. Walton with a troop, the Colonel having been forced to take up arms for or against his country: they turn, take Proctor, let him go; and the next day our hero goes to join Marion, while Col. Walton joins Gates; and on his way, Singleton surprises Gaskens, a tory leader, with his party; Gates refusing to accept the proffered aid of Marion, the latter General, with our hero, departs; the battle is fought, Col. Walton taken, and carried to Dorchester, to be tried and executed, but is rescued at the scaffold by Singleton, who thus wins cousin Kate, and marries her we suppose, for the author leaves us in the dark as to the “consummation most devoutly to be wished for.”
This is the outline, and we will now examine parts more minutely. The author, in the first thirty pages, proceeds to introduce the hero to the reader, in the bar-room of the “Royal George” at Dorchester, which “belongs to Ashley no longer,” and gives a tedious account of sundry bullyings and threats, between the two rivals, Sergeant Hastings and John Davis, a doughty Goose-creeker, which ended without many blows, thanks to the benign influence of the pretty bar maid, whose influence seems directly the reverse of the heifer in Virgil’s Comparison. The next thirty pages bring our hero to the swamp, and on the ride thither, Humphries gives a learned disquisition upon the manner of building causeways through the swamp, which he proves most conclusively should be built with a “back bone,” and logs placed “up and down the road.” In the following, we have a description of some twenty men, who are under arms in the swamp. “The gloomy painter would have done much with the scene before them,” says our author. Would that the gloomy painter had done it, or some one, who would have done more in fewer words. It is a fault with this author, as it is with all who have a lack of genius or vivid imagination, that, instead of seizing upon the prominent and striking points in a scene, and sketching them with a bold hand, leaving the picture to be filled out by the awakened imagination of the reader, he tires, by giving minute descriptions of every tree, grape vine, and pool of water, and the appearance and position of each individual, as if all-important to the “story,” as well as to the mind of the reader. As the surprize of the tories is the first thing like an incident, that we find in the work, although we are through with half of the first volume, was this one of even common interest, it should be here transcribed, but it is too prolix, and the most of it is the chase of Frampton, the maniac, after a hang-man tory corporal, who at length became dreadfully bit by the maniac’s sword. The rest of the work has little more of interest, than that which we have thus seen: it is all the transactions of a few men in a swamp, to illustrate the partisan warfare in the south, without interest or useful information. The work is made up of these illustrations, and the trivial adventures of an individual. There is nothing startling enough to please, or to excite but a drowsy interest. Notwithstanding the author tells us that it is his aim “to delineate with all the rapidity of one, who, with the mystic lantern, runs his uncouth shapes and varying shadows along the gloomy wall, startling imagination, and enkindling curiosity,” his delineations are slow, and imagination and curiosity are left to their slumbers. The author who promises a novel purely historical, in which true history is his chief object, promises much—such promises it requires no ordinary mind to fulfill; and the work before us must be looked upon only as a novel—one, in which fiction, as usual, supplies most of the material.
In this, as in the other works of this author, there is shown the want of all those powers which mark genius. It has no deeply drawn characters, no marks of deep insight into the human heart. There is nothing about the hero, that should set him apart from other men in his vocation; and Col. Walton, with a weakness that seems like dotage, although he is in the prime of life, hesitates long between private interest and patriotism; and is at last driven to side with his country—a character despised to the last—a lie upon the high minded patriots of the south, who staked their princely fortunes and their lives, in the cause of freedom. The other characters, by which the author has endeavored to excite a higher interest, are Frampton and Porgy. Both are failures, and the most accurate idea we get of the latter, is where he is turned grunter, to catch three terrapins, that are “basking in the starlight,” upon a tree that has fallen into the creek. Mr. Simms should never again attempt wit, or humor, unless when he is dealing with the negro character, in which he sometimes succeeds.
Kate Walton is a high minded girl enough. We see but little of her; but she should not have aimed the pistol at Col. Proctor; and when she snapped it, the weapon should not have missed fire. Singleton shows little sense of propriety, not to speak of affection, when he pressed his suit the moment after leaving the bedside of his dying sister; and the girl rebukes him well: “How can you know it—how can you feel it, Robert, when you come from the presence of one already linked, as it were, with heaven, and thus immediately urge to me so earthly a prayer?” Emily Singleton—the fading flower—
“There is a beauty in woman’s decay;”
and no one,—the coldest hearted, cannot contemplate the scene—a lovely woman, looking her last upon her existence here—“a flower gathered for the tomb,” ere the sweet bud is fully opened—without being excited to feeling. The death bed scene is affecting, and well portrayed. That, and the description of the hurricane, are almost the only parts of the work that command our feelings or admiration, and the rude entrance of a stranger jars harshly upon us, and turns our sympathies to hate against the intruder.
This author has few beauties of style—we believe that those who have praised him most, have ventured only to be silent concerning this. There are no beauties of this description, to atone for want of incident; nothing in the manner, to charm us into indifference to the matter; and those who pretend to admire his writings the most, cannot point out in them all, one sentence that contains peculiar beauty, or originality of thought or expression. Mr. Simms at best is but an imitator. His characters, so far as he delineates them, are familiar. We can point out the original to each of them, in the writings of others. We would not do an author wrong. We would be the last to discourage talent, but we do not believe that Mr. Simms is one to give a helping hand to our literature, but, on the reverse, he will injure it. Aside from his works, we know nothing of him, and therefore cannot have “set down aught in malice.” He proposes “a series” of works, of which “The Partisan” is the first,—three to be devoted to the events of the Revolution in South Carolina; and we cannot calculate the number destined for other parts of the country. But he says, “I know not that I shall complete, or even continue the series; much will depend upon the reception of the present narrative.” There is then yet some small hope that the threatened inundation may not flow upon us. Heaven grant that voices enough may be raised to stay the coming flood, and say, “peace, be still.”
GREEK ANTHOLOGY.—No. II.
Honest Friend—
I call thee honest, because thou needs must be such, since thou art reading what neither toucheth thy cupidity, nor enkindleth a flame of self-dedicated love. I call thee friend, as in common courtesy I should, till I perceive some demonstrations of enmity.