_Lives of the Necromancers: or an Account of the Most Eminent Persons
in Successive Ages, who have claimed for themselves, or to whom has
been imputed by others, the Exercise of Magical Power. By William
Godwin, Author of "Caleb Williams," &c. New York: Published by Harper
& Brothers._
The name of the author of Caleb Williams, and of St. Leon, is, with
us, a word of weight, and one which we consider a guarantee for the
excellence of any composition to which it may be affixed. There is
about all the writings of Godwin, one peculiarity which we are not
sure that we have ever seen pointed out for observation, but which,
nevertheless, is his chief idiosyncrasy--setting him peculiarly apart
from all other _literati_ of the day. We allude to an air of mature
thought--of deliberate premeditation pervading, in a remarkable
degree, even his most common-place observations. He never uses a
hurried expression, or hazards either an ambiguous phrase, or a
premature opinion. His style therefore is highly artificial; but the
extreme finish and proportion always observable about it, render this
artificiality, which in less able hands would be wearisome, in him a
grace inestimable. We are never tired of his terse, nervous, and
sonorous periods--for their terseness, their energy, and even their
melody, are made, in all cases, subservient to the sense with which
they are invariably fraught. No English writer, with whom we have any
acquaintance, with the single exception of Coleridge, has a fuller
appreciation of the value of _words_; and none is more nicely
discriminative between closely-approximating meanings.
The avowed purpose of the volume now before us is to exhibit a wide
view of human credulity. "To know"--says Mr. Godwin--"the things that
are not, and cannot be, but have been imagined and believed, is the
most curious chapter in the annals of man." _In extenso_ we differ
with him.
There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in thy philosophy.
There are many things, too, in the great circle of human experience,
more curious than even the records of human credulity--but that they
form one of the most curious chapters, we were at all times ready to
believe, and had we been in any degree skeptical, the _Lives of the
Necromancers_ would have convinced us.
Unlike the work of Brewster, the Necromancy of Mr. Godwin is not a
Treatise on Natural Magic. It does not pretend to show the _manner_ in
which delusion acts upon mankind--at all events, this is not the
_object_ of the book. The design, if we understand it, is to display
in their widest extent, the great range and wild extravagancy of the
imagination of man. It is almost superfluous to say that in this he
has fully succeeded. His compilation is an invaluable work, evincing
much labor and research, and full of absorbing interest. The only
drawback to the great pleasure which its perusal has afforded us, is
found in the author's unwelcome announcement in the Preface, that for
the present he winds up his literary labors with the production of
this book. The pen which wrote Caleb Williams, should never for a
moment be idle.
Were we to specify any article, in the Necromancy, as more
particularly interesting than another, it would be the one entitled
'Faustus.' The prevalent idea that Fust the printer, and Faustus the
magician, were identical, is here very properly contradicted.