"Thereafter, she but knew the charm
Of resting on her lover's arm,
And listening to his voice elate,
As he betimes _went on to state
The phases in his own strange fate,
Since last they met_."
Page 100.--Speaking of "those of
thoughtful mood," he says,--
"With whom I oft have whiled away
The dusky hour upon the deep,
Which most men wisely give to sleep."
There is in this last line a dark, grim, sardonic appreciation of the
advantages which common minds have over those that, like the poet's own,
have to endure the splendid miseries of genius,--a dark moodiness, like
that of a tame Byron remorsefully recalling a wild debauch upon green
tea,--that is deliciously funny.
Page 230.--The heroine, who is less
poetical by far than her rough servitor,
says,--
"Carl! not for all the golden sand
Of famed Pactolus, would I hurt
Thy feelings; _'tis my wont to blurt_
My humour thus."
Page 298.--The hero, who is hardly
more romantic than the heroine, has married
his own sister:--
"Lord Hubart gazed with steady eye
And arms still folded, on old Carl--
'Here is, i' faith, a pretty snarl
To be unwound'--but his reply
Was cut short," etc., etc.
In fact, the great objection to Lord Hubart, as may be inferred from the
above-quoted passage, is, that he is hopelessly vulgar. We are loath to say
so, because of our respect for English aristocracy; but English
aristocracy, truth compels us to observe, cuts no great figure on our
American stage or in our American literature.
In short, this is a very silly book. It abounds in trite moralizing, for
instances of which we will merely refer the reader to pp. 65, 131, and
299. The author remarks exultingly, in his Introduction, that his is
comparatively an uncultivated mind, We can only say, we should think so!
Ignorance is plentiful everywhere, but it really seems as if it were
reserved for some of our American writers to display in its finest
specimens ignorance vaunting its own deficiencies. There is a great deal of
nonsense talked about "uncultivated minds": some men are eminent in spite
of being uncultivated; but no man was ever eminent because he was
uncultivated. Some instances of a lamentable misuse of language in "Hester"
we give below.