Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847.
A wholesome moral restraint in starting at every bush, and hating every old woman for a witch! Mr Sims, from his own intellectual altitude, pronounces these faiths to be "shadows;" he does not believe – not he – in the walking about at night of impalpable white sheets; but if you should happen to be of the same opinion with himself, then the cold-blooded demon of science has seized you for his prey. In this, there are many others who resemble Mr Sims; one often meets with half-educated men and women, who would take it as an affront, an unpardonable insult, if you were to suppose them addicted to the childish superstitions of the nursery, who nevertheless cannot endure to hear those very superstitions decried or exploded by others. They want to "disbelieve and tremble" at the same time.
We must state, in justice to Mr Sims, that this outbreak against science is the preluding strain to his "Wigwams and Cabins," where he has the intention of dealing with the supernatural and the marvellous. Let him tell his marvels, and welcome; a ghost story is just as good now as ever it was; but why usher it in with this didactic folly? Of these tales, as we do not wish again to refer to the works of Mr Sims, we may say here, that they appear to give some insight into the manner of life of the early settlers, and their intercourse with the savages. In this point of view they might be read with profit, could we be sure that the pictures they present were tolerably faithful. But a writer who has no partiality whatever for matter of fact, and who systematically prefers fiction to truth, comes before us with unusual suspicion, and requires an additional guarantee.14
"Paperson Literature and Art." Our readers have already had a specimen, and not an unfavourable one, of the eloquence of Mrs Margaret Fuller. This lady is by no means given to the flagrant absurdities of the gentleman we have just parted with, but in her writings there is a constant effort to be forcible, which leads her always a little on the wrong side of good taste and common sense. There is an uneasy and ceaseless labour to be brilliant and astute. The reader is perpetually impressed with the effort that is put forth in his favour, – an ambiguous claim, and the only one, that is made upon his gratitude.
America is not without her army of critics, her well-appointed and disciplined array of reviewers. The North American Review betrays no inferiority to its brethren on this side of the Atlantic. Let there be therefore no mistake in regarding Mrs Margaret Fuller as the representative of the critical judgment of her country. But there is a large section, or coterie, of its literary people, whose mode of thinking we imagine this essayist may be considered as fairly expressing. Even this section, we do not suppose that she leads; but she has just that amount of talent and of hardihood which would prompt her to press forward into the front rank of any band of thinkers she had joined. She is not of that stout-hearted race who venture forth alone; she must travel in company; but in that company she will go as far as who goes farthest, and will occasionally dart from the ranks to strike a little blow upon her own account. The writings of minds of this calibre may be usefully studied for the indications they give of the currents of opinion, whether on the graver matters of politics, or, as in this instance, on the less important topics of literature.
Amongst this lady's criticisms upon English poets, we remarked some names, very highly lauded, of which we in England have heard little or nothing. This, in our crowded literature, where so much of both what is good and what is bad escapes detection, is no proof of an erroneous judgment on her part. We, on the contrary, may have been culpably neglectful. But when we looked at the quotations she makes to support the praise she gives, we were speedily relieved from any self-reproach of this description. Passages are cited for applause, in which there is neither distinguishable thought, nor elegance of diction, nor even an attempt at melody of verse; passages which could have won upon her only (and herein these quotations, if they fail of giving a fair representation of the poet, serve at least to characterise the critic,) could have won upon her only by a seeming air of profundity, by their utter contempt of perspicuous language, and a petulant disregard of even that rhythm, or regulated harmony, which has been supposed to distinguish verse from prose. For very manifest reasons, however, these are not the occasions on which we prefer to test the critical powers of Mrs Margaret Fuller. It is more advisable to observe her manner when occupied upon established reputations, such as Scott, and Byron, and Southey.
Our critic partakes in the very general opinion which places the prose works of Sir Walter Scott far above his poetry. It is an opinion we do not share. Admirable as are, beyond all doubt, his novels, Sir Walter Scott, in out humble estimation, has a greater chance of immortality as the author of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, than as the author of Waverley. That, perhaps, is our heresy, and Mrs Fuller may be considered here as representing the more orthodox creed. And thus it is she represents it.
"The poetry of Walter Scott has been superseded by his prose, yet it fills no unimportant niche in the literary history of the last half century, and may be read, at least once in life, with great pleasure. Marmion, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, &c., cannot, indeed, be companions of those Sabbath hours of which the weariest, dreariest life need not be destitute, for their bearing is not upon the true life of man, his immortal life." (If Mrs Fuller wrote in the language of the conventicle this would be intelligible; but she does not; what does she mean?) "Coleridge felt this so deeply, that in a lately published work, he is recorded to have said, 'not twenty lines of Scott's poetry will ever reach posterity; it has relation to nothing.'" (Vol. i. p. 63.)
If Coleridge said this in the haste and vivacity of conversation, it was great in justice to his memory to record and print it. "Not twenty lines!" – "relation to nothing!" Why, there are scores of lines in his earliest poem alone, which will ring long in the ears of men, for they have relation to the simple unalterable, universal feelings of mankind.
"Oh, said he that his heart was cold!"
We will not believe it. We are tempted to answer with a torrent of quotation; but this is not the place.
"To one who has read," continues Mrs Fuller, "Scott's novels first, and looks in his poems for the same dramatic interest, the rich humour, the tragic force, the highly wrought, yet flowing dialogue, and the countless minutiæ in the finish of character, they must bring disappointment." He who looks for all and exactly the same things in the poems which he had found in the novels, will assuredly, like other foolish seekers, be disappointed. Sir Walter Scott did not put his Bailie Nicol Jarvie nor his Andrew Fairservice into rhyme; nor does a lay of border chivalry embrace all that variety of character, or of dialogue, which finds ample room in the historical romance.
Amongst a certain class of critics, it has been long a prevailing humour to decry one Alexander Pope. Mrs Margaret Fuller is resolved that if not first in the field against this notorious pretender, no one shall show greater hardihood than herself in the attack upon him. It is one of those occasions when, though surrounded by a goodly company of friends, she yet finds opportunity for an individual act of heroism. They are but a few words she utters – but match them if you can! We do not flinch, we Amazonian warriors. It is a-propos of Lord Byron that she takes occasion to point a shaft, or rather to throw her battle-axe, at the head of this flagrant impostor. The whole passage must be quoted:
"It is worthy of remark that Byron's moral perversion never paralysed or obscured his intellectual powers, though it might lower their aims. With regard to the plan and style of his works, he showed strong good sense and clear judgment. The man who indulged such narrowing egotism, such irrational scorn, would prime and polish without mercy the stanzas in which he uttered them." (Wonderful! that an egotist and a misanthrope should have been kept from defacing his own verses. Then follows our terrible bye-blow.) "And this bewildered idealist was a very bigot in behoof of the common-sensical satirist, the almost peevish realist—Pope!" (P. 76.)
With what consummate disdain does she condescend to give the coup-de-grace to the unhappy lingering author of the "Epistle to Arbuthnot," and "The Rape of the Lock!" These poems of the "peevish realist," shall have no place, since Mrs Margaret Fuller so determines it, in the new literature of America. We will keep them here in England – in a casket of gold, if we ever possess one.
One other specimen of the lady's eloquence and critical discrimination must suffice. She is characterising Southey.
"The muse of Southey is a beautiful statue of crystal, in whose bosom burns an immortal flame. We hardly admire as they deserve, the perfection of the finish, and the elegance of the contours, because our attention is so fixed on the radiance which glows through them." – (P. 82.)
Of this poet, who has so much flame in him that we cannot distinctly see his features, it is said in almost the next sentence, "Even in his most brilliant passages there is nothing of the heat of inspiration, nothing of that celestial fire which makes us feel that the author has, by intensifying the action of the mind, raised himself to communion with superior intelligences.(!) It is where he is most calm that he is most beautiful; and, accordingly, he is more excellent in the expression of sentiment than in narration." (The force of the "accordingly" one does not see; surely there may be as much scope for inspiration in sentiment as in narration.) "Scarce any writer presents to us a sentiment with such a tearful depth of expression; but though it is a tearful depth, those tears were shed long since, and Faith and Love have hallowed them. You nowhere are made to feel the bitterness, the vehemence of present emotion; but the phœnix born from passion is seen hovering over the ashes of what was once combined with it."
The young phœnix rises from the ashes of the old; so far we comprehend. This, metaphorically understood, would infer that a new and stronger passion rose from the ashes of the old and defunct one. But into the allegorical signification of Mrs Fuller's phœnix, we confess we cannot penetrate. We have a dim conception that it would not be found to harmonise very well with that other meaning conveyed to us in so dazzling a manner by the illuminated statue. Pity the lady could not have found some other poet to take off her hands one of those images: we are not so heartless as to suggest the expediency of the absolute sacrifice of either.
It is not to be supposed that this authoress is always so startling and original as in these passages. She sometimes attains, and keeps for a while, the level of commonplace. But we do not remember in the whole of her two volumes a single passage where she rises to an excellence above this. If we did, we should be happy to quote it.
"Tales, by Edgar A. Poe," is the next book upon our list. No one can read these tales, then close the volume, as he may with a thousand other tales, and straightway forget what manner of book he has been reading. Commonplace is the last epithet that can be applied to them. They are strange – powerful – more strange than pleasing, and powerful productions without rising to the rank of genius. The author is a strong-headed man, which epithet by no means excludes the possibility of being, at times, wrong-headed also. With little taste, and much analytic power, one would rather employ such an artist on the anatomical model of the Moorish Venus, than intrust to his hands any other sort of Venus. In fine, one is not sorry to have read these tales; one has no desire to read them twice.
They are not framed according to the usual manner of stories. On each occasion, it is something quite other than the mere story that the author has in view, and which has impelled him to write. In one, he is desirous of illustrating La Place's doctrine of probabilities as applied to human events. In another, he displays his acumen in unravelling or in constructing a tangled chain of circumstantial evidence. In a third, ("The Black Cat") he appears at first to aim at rivalling the fantastic horrors of Hoffman, but you soon observe that the wild and horrible invention in which he deals, is strictly in the service of an abstract idea which it is there to illustrate. His analytic observation has led him, he thinks, to detect in men's minds an absolute spirit of "perversity," prompting them to do the very opposite of what reason and mankind pronounce to be right, simply because they do pronounce it to be right. The punishment of this sort of diabolic spirit of perversity, he brings about by a train of circumstances as hideous, incongruous, and absurd, as the sentiment itself.
There is, in the usual sense of the word, no passion in these tales, neither is there any attempt made at dramatic dialogue. The bent of Mr Poe's mind seems rather to have been towards reasoning than sentiment. The style, too, has nothing peculiarly commendable; and when the embellishments of metaphor and illustration are attempted, they are awkward, strained, infelicitous. But the tales rivet the attention. There is a marvellous skill in putting together the close array of facts and of details which make up the narrative, or the picture, for the effect of his description, as of his story, depends never upon any bold display of the imagination, but on the agglomeration of incidents, enumerated in the most veracious manner. In one of his papers he describes the Mahlstrom or what he chooses to imagine the Mahlstrom may be, and by dint of this careful and De Foe-like painting, the horrid whirlpool is so placed before the mind, that we feel as if we had seen, and been down into it.
The "Gold Bug" is the first and the most striking of the series, owing to the extreme and startling ingenuity with which the narrative is constructed. It would be impossible, however, to convey an idea of this species of merit, without telling the whole story; nor would it be possible to tell the story in shorter compass, with any effect, than it occupies here. The "Murders of the Rue Morgue," and "The Mystery of Marie Roget," both turn on the interest excited by the investigation of circumstantial evidence. But, unlike most stories of this description, our sympathies are not called upon, either in the fate of the person assassinated, or in behalf of some individual falsely accused of the crime; the interest is sustained solely by the nature of the evidence, and the inferences to be adduced from it. The latter of these stories is, in fact, a transfer to the city of Paris of a tragedy which had been really enacted in New York. The incidents have been carefully preserved, the scene alone changed, and the object of the author in thus re-narrating the facts seems to have been to investigate the evidence again, and state his own conclusions as to the probable culprit. From these, also, it would be quite as impossible to make an extract as it would be to quote a passage from an interesting case as reported in one of our law-books. The last story in the volume has, however, the advantage of being brief, and an outline of it may convey some idea of the peculiar manner of Mr Poe. It is entitled "The Man of the Crowd."
The author describes himself as sitting on an autumnal evening at the bow-window of the D – coffee-house in London. He has just recovered from an illness, and feels in that happy frame of mind, the precise converse of ennui, where merely to breathe is enjoyment, and we feel a fresh and inquisitive interest in all things around us.
The passing crowd entertains him with its motley variety of costume and character. He has watched till the sun has gone down, and the streets have become indebted for their illumination solely to the gas lamps. As the night deepened, the interest of the scene deepened also, for the character of the crowd had insensibly but materially changed, and strange features and aspects of ill omen begin to make their appearance.
With his brow to the glass of the window, our author was thus occupied in scrutinising the passengers, when suddenly there came within his field of vision a countenance, (it was that of a decrepid old man of some sixty-five or seventy years of age) which at once arrested and absorbed all his attention. It bore an expression which might truly be called fiendish, for it gave the idea of mental power, of cruelty, of malice, of intense – of supreme despair. It passed on. There came a craving desire to see the face of that man again – to keep him in view – to know more of him. Snatching up his hat, and hastily putting on an over-coat, our excited observer ran into the street, pursued the direction the stranger had taken, and soon overtook him.
He noticed that the clothes of this man were filthy and ragged, but that his linen, however neglected, was of finest texture. The strong light of a gas lamp also revealed to him a diamond and a dagger. These observations it was easy for him to make, for the stranger never looked behind, but with chin dropped upon his breast, his glaring eyes rolling a little to the right and left in their sunken sockets, continued to urge his way along the populous thoroughfare.
By and by he passed into a cross street, where there were fewer persons. Here a change in his demeanour became apparent. He walked more slowly, and with less object than before – more hesitatingly. He crossed and re-crossed the way repeatedly without apparent aim. A second turn brought him to a square, brilliantly lighted and overflowing with life. The previous manner of the stranger now re-appeared. With knit brows, and chin dropped upon his breast, he took his way steadily through the throng. But his pursuer was surprised to find that having made the circuit of this crowded promenade, he turned, retraced his steps, and repeated the same walk several times.
It was now growing late, and it began to rain. The crowd within the square dispersed. With a gesture of impatience, the stranger passed into a bye-street almost deserted. Along this he rushed with a fearful rapidity which could never have been expected from so old a man. It brought him to a large bazaar, with the localities of which he appeared perfectly acquainted, and where his original demeanour again returned, as he forced his way to and fro, without aim, amongst the host of buyers and sellers, looking at all objects with a wild and vacant stare.
All this excited still more the curiosity of his indefatigable observer, who became more and more amazed at his behaviour, and felt an increased desire to solve the enigma. The bazaar was now about to close; lamps were here and there extinguished, every body was preparing to depart. Returning into the street, the old man looked anxiously around him for an instant, and then with incredible swiftness, threaded a number of narrow and intricate lanes which led him out in front of one of the principal theatres. The amusements were just concluded, and the audience was streaming from the doors. The old man was seen to gasp as he threw himself into the crowd, and then the intense agony of his countenance seemed in some measure to abate. He took the course which was pursued by the greater number of the company. But these, as he proceeded, branched of right and left to their several homes, and as the street became vacant, his restlessness and vacillation re-appeared. Seized at length as with panic, he hurried on with every mark of agitation, until he had plunged into one of the most noisome and pestilential quarters, or rather suburbs of the town. Here a number of the most abandoned of the populace were reeling to and fro.
"The spirits of the old man," the author shall conclude the story in his own words, "again flickered up, as a lamp which is near its death hour. Once more, he strode onward with elastic tread. Suddenly a corner was turned, a blaze of light burst upon our sight, and we stood before one of the huge, suburban temples of intemperance – one of the palaces of the fiend, Gin.
"It was near day-break; but a number of wretched inebriates still pressed in and out of the flaunting entrance. With a half shriek of joy, the old man forced a passage within, resumed at once his original bearing, and stalked backward and forward, without apparent object among the throng. He had not been thus long occupied, however, before a rush to the doors gave token that the host was closing them for the night. It was something even more intense than despair that I then observed upon the countenance of the singular being I had watched so pertinaciously. Yet he did not hesitate in his career, but, with a mad energy, retraced his steps at once to the heart of the mighty London. Long and swiftly he fled, while I followed him in the wildest amazement, resolute not to abandon a scrutiny in which I now felt an interest all-absorbing. The sun arose while we proceeded, and when we had once again reached that most thronged mart of the populous town, the street of the D – Hotel, it presented an appearance of human bustle and activity scarcely inferior to what I had seen on the evening before. And here, long, amid the momently increasing confusion, did I persist in the pursuit of the stranger. But, as usual, he walked to and fro, and during the day did not pass out of the turmoil of that street. And, as the shades of the second evening came on, I grew wearied unto death, and stopping fully in front of the wanderer, gazed at him steadfastly in the face. He noticed me not, but resumed his solemn walk, while I, ceasing to follow, remained absorbed in contemplation. 'This old man,' I said at length, 'is the type and the genius of deep crime. He refuses to be alone. He is the man of the crowd. It will be in vain to follow, for I shall learn no more of him, nor of his deeds.'"
In this description it would be difficult to recognise the topography of London, or the manners of its inhabitants. That Square brilliantly illuminated and thronged with promenaders, the oldest inhabitant would scarcely find. He closes his gin-palace at the hour when, we believe, it would be about to re-open; and ejects his multitude from the bazaar and the theatre about the same time. When he lays his scene at Paris there is the same disregard to accuracy. There is no want of names of streets and passages, but no Parisian would find them, or find them in the juxtaposition he has placed them. This is a matter hardly worth remarking; to his American readers an ideal topography is as good as any other; we ourselves should be very little disturbed by a novel which, laying its scene in New York, should misname half the streets of that city. We are led to notice it chiefly from a feeling of surprise, that one so partial to detail should not have more frequently profited by the help which a common guide-book, with its map, might have given him.
Still less should we raise an objection on the manifest improbability of this vigilant observer, a convalescent too, being able to keep upon his legs, running or walking, the whole of the night and of the next day, (to say nothing of the pedestrian powers of the old man.) In a picture of this kind, a moral idea is sought to be portrayed by imaginary incidents purposely exaggerated. The mind passing immediately from these incidents to the idea they convey, regards them as little more than a mode of expression of the moral truth. He who should insist, in a case of this kind, on the improbability of the facts, would find himself in the same position as that hapless critic who, standing before the bronze statue of Canning, then lately erected at Westminster, remarked, that "Mr Canning was surely not so tall as he is there represented;" the proportions, in fact, approaching to the colossal. "No, nor so green," said the wit to whom the observation had been unhappily confided. When the artist made a bronze statue, eight feet high, of Mr Canning, it was evidently not his stature nor his complexion that he had designed to represent.
Amongst the tales of Mr Poe are several papers which, we suppose, in the exigency of language, we must denominate philosophical. They have at least the merit of boldness, whether in the substratum of thought they contain, or the machinery employed for its exposition. We shall not be expected to encounter Mr Poe's metaphysics; our notice must be here confined solely to the narrative or inventive portion of these papers. In one of these, entitled "Mesmeric Revelations," the reader may be a little startled to hear that he has adopted the mesmerised patient as a vehicle of his ideas on the nature of the soul and of its immortal life; the entranced subject having, in this case, an introspective power still more remarkable than that which has hitherto revealed itself only in a profound knowledge of his anatomical structure. As we are not yet convinced that a human being becomes supernaturally enlightened – in mesmerism more than in fanaticism – by simply losing his senses; or that a man in a trance, however he got there, is necessarily omniscient; we do not find that Mr Poe's conjectures on these mysterious topics gather any weight whatever from the authority of the spokesman to whom he has intrusted them. We are not quite persuaded that a cataleptic patient sees very clearly what is going on at the other side of our own world; when this has been made evident to us, we shall be prepared to give him credit for penetrating into the secrets of the next.
In another of these nondescript papers, "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion," Mr Poe has very boldly undertaken to figure forth the destruction of the world, and explain how that great and final catastrophe will be accomplished. It is a remarkable instance of that species of imaginary matter of fact description, to which we have ventured to think that the Americans show something like a national tendency. The description here is very unlike that with which Burnet closes his "Theory of the Earth;" it is confined to the natural history of the event; but there is nothing whatever in Mr Poe's manner to diminish from the sacredness or the sublimity of the topic. With some account of this singular and characteristic paper we shall dismiss the volume of Mr Poe.
The world has been destroyed. Eiros, who was living at the time, relates to Charmion, who had died some years before, the nature of the last awful event.
"I need scarcely tell you," says the disembodied spirit, "that even when you left us, men had agreed to understand those passages in the most holy writings which speak of the final destruction of all things by fire, as having reference to the orb of the earth alone. But in regard to the immediate agency of the ruin, speculation had been at fault from that epoch in astronomical knowledge in which the comets were divested of the terrors of flame. The very moderate density of these bodies had been well established. They had been observed to pass among the satellites of Jupiter without bringing about any sensible alteration either in the masses or in the orbits of these secondary planets. We had long regarded the wanderers as vapoury creations of inconceivable tenuity, and as altogether incapable of doing injury to our substantial globe, even in the event of contact. But contact was not in any degree dreaded; for the elements of all the comets were accurately known. That among them we should look for the agency of the threatened fiery destruction, had been for many years considered an inadmissible idea. But wonders and wild fancies had been, of late days, strangely rife among mankind; and although it was only with a few of the ignorant that actual apprehension prevailed upon the announcement by astronomers of a new comet, yet this announcement was generally received with I know not what of agitation and mistrust.
"The elements of the strange orb were immediately calculated, and it was at once conceded by all observers that its path, at perihelion, would bring it into very close proximity with the earth. There were two or three astronomers, of secondary note, who resolutely maintained that a contact was inevitable. I cannot very well express to you the effect of this intelligence upon the people. For a few short days they would not believe an assertion which their intellect, so long employed among worldly considerations, could not in any manner grasp. But the truth of a vitally important fact soon makes its way into the understanding of even the most stolid. Finally, all men saw that astronomical knowledge lied not, and they awaited the comet.
"Its approach was not, at first, seemingly rapid, nor was its appearance of very unusual character. It was of a dull red, and had little perceptible train. For seven or eight days we saw no material increase in its apparent diameter, and but a partial alteration in its colour. Meantime the ordinary affairs of men were discarded, and all interest absorbed in a growing discussion, instituted by philosophers in respect to the cometary nature."
That no material injury to the globe, or its inhabitants would result from contact (which was now, however, certainly expected) with a body of such extreme tenuity as the comet, was the opinion which gained ground every day. The arguments of the theologians coincided with those of men of science in allaying the apprehensions of mankind. For as these were persuaded that the end of all things was to be brought about by the agency of fire, and as it was proved that the comets were not of a fiery nature, it followed that this dreaded stranger could not come charged with any such mission as the destruction of the globe.