[A long passage from Chap, XIII., beginning ‘Captain Cleveland sate betwixt the sisters,’ follows.]
Suffice it to say, that we differ from this solution of the difficulty, ingenious and old as it is; and to justify that opinion, ask only whether such a man as Cleveland would not be a general favourite with women, instead of being so merely with those of a particularly retired and fantastic character, which destroys the author’s balance of qualities in love? Indeed, his own story is a very bad illustration of his doctrine; for this romantic and imprudent attachment of the gentle and sensitive Minna to the bold and profligate Captain Cleveland leads to nothing but the most disastrous consequences; and the opposition between their sentiments and characters, which was to make them fit partners for life, only prevents the possibility of their union, and renders both parties permanently miserable. Besides, the whole perplexity is, after all, gratuitous. The enmity between Cleveland and young Mertoun (the chief subject of the plot) is founded on their jealousy of each other in regard to Minna, and yet there had been no positive engagement between her and Mertoun, who, like Edmund in Lear, is equally betrothed to both sisters—in the end marrying the one that he as well as the reader likes least. Afterwards, when the real character of this gay rover of the seas is more fully developed, and he gets into scrapes with the police of Orkney, the grave, romantic Minna, like a true northern lass, deserts him, and plays off a little old-fashioned, unavailing, but discreet morality upon him. When the reader begins to sympathise with ‘a brave man in distress,’ then is the time for his mistress with ‘the pale face and raven locks’ to look to her own character. We like the theory of the Beggar’s Opera better than this: the ladies there followed their supposed hero, their beau ideal of a lover, to prison, instead of leaving him to his untoward fate. Minna is no NUT-BROWN MAID, though she has a passion for outlaws, between whose minds and those of the graver and more reflecting of the fair sex there is, according to the opinion of our GREAT UNKNOWN, a secret and pre-established harmony. What is still more extraordinary and unsatisfactory in the progress of the story is this—all the pretended preternatural influence of Norna of the Fitful-Head, the most potent and impressive personage in the drama, is exerted to defeat Cleveland’s views, and to give Minna to Mordaunt Mertoun, for whom she conceives an instinctive and anxious attachment as her long-lost son; and yet in the end the whole force of this delusion, and the reader’s sympathies, are destroyed by the discovery that Cleveland, not Mertoun, is her real offspring, and that she has been equally led astray by her maternal affection and preternatural pretensions. Does this great writer of romances, this profound historiographer of the land of visions and of second sight, thus mean to qualify his thrilling mysteries—to back out of his thrice-hallowed prejudices, and to turn the tables upon us with modern cant and philosophic scepticism? That is the last thing we could forgive him!
We have said that the characters of the Pirate are not altogether new. Norna, the enchantress, whom he is ‘so fond’ at last to depose from her ideal cloudy throne of spells and mystic power, is the Meg Merrilies of the scene. She passes over it with vast strides, is at hand whenever she is wanted, sits hatching fate on the topmost tower that overlooks the wilderness of waves, or glides suddenly from a subterraneous passage, and in either case moulds the elements of nature, and the unruly passions of men, to her purposes. She has ‘strange power of speech,’ weaves events with words, is present wherever she pleases, and performs what she wills, and yet she doubts her own power, and criticises her own pretensions. Meg Merrilies was an honester witch. She at least stuck true to herself. We hate anything by halves; and most of all, imagination and superstition piece-meal. Cleveland, again, is a sort of inferior Gentle Geordie, and Minna lags after Effie Deans, the victim of misplaced affection, but far, far behind. Wert thou to live a thousand years, and write a thousand romances, thou wouldst never, old True-penny, beat thy own Heart of Mid Lothian! It is for that we can forgive thee all that thou didst mean to write in the Beacon, or hast written elsewhere, beneath the dignity of thy genius and knowledge of man’s weaknesses, as well as better nature! Magnus Troil is a great name, a striking name; but we ken his person before; he is of the same genealogy as the Bailie Braidwardine, and other representatives of old Scottish hospitality; the dwarf Nick Strumpfer is of a like familiar breed, only uglier and more useless than any former one: we have even traces, previous to the Pirate, of the extraordinary agriculturist and projector, Mr. Timothy Yellowley, and his sister, Miss Barbara Yellowley, with pinched nose and grey eyes; but we confess we have one individual who was before a stranger to us, at least in these parts, namely, Claud Halcro, the poet, and friend of ‘Glorious John.’ We do not think him in his place amidst dwarfs, witches, pirates, and Udallers; and his stories of the Wits’ Coffee-house and Dryden’s poetry are as tedious to the critical reader as they are to his Zetland patron and hearers. We might confirm this opinion by a quotation, but we should be thought too tedious. He fills up, we will venture to say, a hundred pages of the work with sheer impertinence, with pribble prabble. Whenever any serious matter is to be attended to, Claud Halcro pulls out his fiddle and draws the long bow, and repeats some verses of ‘Glorious John.’ Bunce, the friend of Cleveland, is much better; for we can conceive how a strolling-player should turn gentleman-rover in a time of need, and the foppery and finery of the itinerant stage-hero become the quarter-deck exceedingly well. In general, however, our author’s humour requires the aid of costume and dialect to set it off to advantage: his wit is Scotch, not English wit. It must have the twang of the uncouth pronunciation and peculiar manners of the country in it. The elder Mertoun is a striking misanthropic sketch; but it is not very well made out in what his misanthropy originates, nor to what it tends. He is merely a part of the machinery: neither is he the first gentleman in these Novels who lands without an introduction on the remote shores of Scotland, and shuts himself up (for reasons best known to himself) in inaccessible and solitary confinement. We had meant to give the outline of the story of the Pirate, but we are ill at a plot, and do not care to blunt the edge of the reader’s curiosity by anticipating each particular. As far, however, as relates to the historical foundation of the narrative, the author has done it to our hands, and we give his words as they stand in the Advertisement.
[Nearly the whole of the Advertisement is quoted.]
Of the execution of these volumes we need hardly speak. It is inferior, but it is only inferior to some of his former works. Whatever he touches, we see the hand of a master. He has only to describe action, thoughts, scenes, and they everywhere speak, breathe, and live. It matters not whether it be a calm sea-shore, a mountain tempest, a drunken brawl, the ‘Cathedral’s choir and gloom,’ the Sybil’s watch-tower, or the smuggler’s cave; the things are immediately there that we should see, hear, and feel. He is Nature’s Secretary. He neither adds to, nor takes away from her book; and that makes him what he is, the most popular writer living. We might give various instances of his unrivalled undecaying power, but shall select only one or two with which we were most struck and delighted in the perusal. The characters of the two sisters, daughters of Magnus Troil, and the heroines of the tale, are thus beautifully drawn.
[Here follows the description of Minna and Brenda, from Chap. III.]
So much for elegant Vandyke portrait-painting. Now for something of the Salvator style. Norna, the terrific and unhappy Norna, is thus finely introduced.
[The first introduction of Norna is quoted from Chap. V.]
We give one more extract in a different style; and we think the comic painting in it is little inferior to Hogarth’s.
[A passage, beginning ‘Now the fortunate arrival of Mordaunt,’ &c. is quoted from Chap. XI.]