[Footnote 8: The Last Night of Pompeii: A Poem, and Lays and Legends.
By Sumner Lincoln Fairfield. New York: 1829.]
[Footnote 9: The Last Days of Pompeii: By the Author of Pelham, Eugene
Aram, England, and the English, &c. 2 vols. 12mo. New York: 1834.
Harper and Brothers.]
While we have never failed to acknowledge and applaud the brilliant
imagination and the eloquent and fascinating style of Mr. E. L. Bulwer,
we have never feared to assert that he was a sophist in ethics and a
libertine in love, and that _effect_ was apparently the only law which
influenced his mind or guided his pen. Better disguised, but not less
pernicious in principle and evil in action than the Tom Jones and Count
Fathom and Zeluco of Fielding, Smollett and Moore, his characters not
only exist in, but actually create an atmosphere of impurity which
infects the very hearts of his admirers. He invests the seducer with
irresistible attractions, and paints the highwayman and the murderer as
examples for imitation. But even in the execution of his execrable
purposes, he is not original either in his plots or his sentiments. The
old Portuguese Jew Spinoza and his disciples Hobbes, Toland,
Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke have abundantly supplied him with infidel
arguments; and the profligate courtiers of Charles the Second have
contributed their licentious stratagems and impure dialogues to augment
the claims and heighten the charms of his coxcombs, libertines and
menslayers. Mr. Bulwer has read much and skillfully appropriated,
without acknowledgment, all that has suited his designs. He has
artfully clothed the lofty thoughts of others in his own brilliant
garb, and enjoyed the renown of a powerful writer and profound thinker,
when he was little more than an adroit and manoeuvering plagiary. This
we long since perceived, and therefore denied his claims to a high
order of genius, though we readily accorded to him the possession of
much curious knowledge and a felicitous use of language. We never
imagined that the labors of an unrewarded and little regarded American
could be deemed by the proud, _soi-disant_ highborn, and affluent Mr.
Bulwer as worthy of his unquestioning appropriation. We fancied that so
deep a scholar would continue to dig for treasures in ancient and
recondite literature, and pass triumphantly over the obscure
productions of a poor cisatlantic. But we erred. As a member of the
British Parliament, Mr. Bulwer is accustomed to the creation of laws;
and he seems to have made one expressly for his own profit and
pleasure--namely, the law of literary lawlessness. We knew that he was
well content to demand high prices for his immoral novels from his
American publishers; but, until this time, we were not aware that he
considered any thing but gold worth receiving or plundering from
Yankeeland. With his usual tact, he has managed to secure, in no slight
degree, from our labors, that which those labors failed utterly to
receive from our unlettered countrymen; and it is our present purpose
to demand back our own thoughts, which are our property and the
heritage of our children.
It is now three years since 'The Last Night of Pompeii' was written and
published; and, among other English men of letters, a copy of that poem
with a letter, which was never answered, was sent to Mr. Bulwer, who
was, at that time, the editor of the London New Monthly Magazine.
Affliction fell heavily on our heart during the spring of 1832, and,
becoming indifferent to poetic fame and every thing not involved in our
bereavement, we bestowed no thought upon the poem or its reception.
Time has passed on; we have been intensely occupied with other
concerns, and have not been anxious about it since. The apathy, if not
contempt, with which American poets have ever been treated, has driven
Percival into solitude, Bryant and Prentice into politics, Whittier
into abolition schemes, Pierpoint into phrenological experiments, and
all others far away from the barren realm of Parnassus. But lo! the
poem, which was printed by hardwon subscription and left unwelcomed but
by a few cheerful voices, when transmuted into a novel by Bulwer,
becomes a brilliant gem, and illumines the patriotic hearts and clear
understandings of the whole Western World! Who is a Yankee poet that he
should be honoured? but to whom is the English Bulwer unknown? We live,
however--thanks be to Providence! to claim our own and expose all
smugglers, though the redrover Saxon seems to think that the Atlantic
is a very broad ocean, and that the democrats of the West are very
little capable of appreciating any compositions but his own.
Had Mr. Bulwer confined himself to the almost literal adoption of our
title, or had certain passages in his novel betrayed even great
resemblances to others in our poem, we should have said that the
coincidences were somewhat remarkable, and then dismissed the matter
from our thoughts. Many examples in literary history might be presented
to prove that men may think and describe alike without plagiarism, but,
when the incidents and descriptions are as nearly identical as prose
and poetry can well be, we cannot deduce the charitable conclusion that
the very strong likeness is accidental. Our readers shall judge
whether, in this case, it is so.
The characters in the poem are few--in the novel many--but, in both,
the whole interest depends on the adventures of two lovers. In the poem
these lovers are Pansa and Mariamne, a Roman decurion and a captive
Jewish maiden, both Christians; in the novel they are Glaucus and Ione,
Greeks and pagans. With us, Diomede was the prætor and Pansa the
victim; with Bulwer, the former is a rich merchant, and the latter,
ædile of Pompeii. Here, then, there is no similarity, nor is there but
one deserving a remark, until Arbaces--an Eugene Aram antiquated--one
of Bulwer's learned, wise and soliloquizing villains--seduces Ione to
his mansion of iniquity. The first coincidence, to which we refer, is
the scene of the sacrifice,[10] and the oracular response. The
description in the novel reads thus:
"The aruspices inspected the entrails."--"It was then that a dead
silence fell over the whispering crowd, and the priests gathering
around the cella, another priest, naked save by a cincture round the
middle, rushed forward, and dancing with wild gestures, implored an
answer from the goddess."--"A low murmuring noise was heard within the
body of the statue; thrice the head moved, and the lips parted, and
then a hollow voice uttered these mystic words:
"There are waves like chargers that meet and glow,
There are graves ready wrought in the rocks below,
On the brow of the Future the dangers lower,
But blessed are your barks in the fearful hour."
[Footnote 10: Vol. i. p. 42.]
That in the poem is as follows--the oracle preceding the description of
its effect upon the superstitious multitude.
"The aruspices proclaimed the prodigies.
'The entrails palpitate--the liver's lobes
Are withered, and the heart hath shrivelled up!'
Groans rose from living surges round; yet loud
The High Priest uttered--'Lay them on the fire!'
'Twas done; and wine and oil poured amply o'er,
And still the sacrificer wildly cried--
'Woe unto all! the wandering fires hiss up
Through the black vapors--lapping o'er the flesh
They burn not, but abandon! ashes fill
The temple, whirled upon the wind that waves'" etc.
_The Oracle_.
"'Ye shall pass o'er the Tyrrhene sea in ships
Laden with virgins, gems and gods, and spoils
Of a dismembered empire, and a cloud
Of light shall radiate your ocean path!'
Breathes not the soul of mystery in this?"
"And the prostrated multitudes, like woods
Hung with the leaves of autumn, stirred; then fell
A silence when the heart was heard--a pause--
When ardent hope became an agony;
And parted lips and panting pulses--eyes
Wild with their watchings, brows with beaded dews
Of expectation chilled and fevered--all
The shaken and half lifted frame--declared
The moment of the oracle had come!
A sceptre to the hand of Isis leapt
And waved; and then the deep voice of the priest
Uttered the maiden's answer, and the fall
Of many quickened steps like whispers pass'd
Along the columned aisles and vestibule."
Both oracles partake the same mystic character and allude obscurely to
the same fearful and overwhelming event.
The character of Arbaces, the Egyptian Magus, is peculiarly after
Bulwer's own heart--for he is an entire, thorough, irredeemable demon,
who weeps over venomous reptiles and kills innocent men: but a very
large portion of his mystic discourse, which appears on pages 81-2-3-4
of volume first, is borrowed, as customary, without even an apologetic
allusion, from Moore's Epicurean. We leave that poet to reclaim his
property, and proceed to assert the identity of our own. In the novel,
Arbaces beguiles Ione into his house, with the resolution to possess
her by fraud or violence. In the poem, the priest of Isis inveigles the
virgin of Pompeii into his lascivious temple with the same intent. Both
the priest and Arbaces, having conquered every obstacle, are rapidly
advancing to the accomplishment of their evil designs, when they are
interrupted, and their victims rescued by the very same awful
occurrence;
"At that awful moment," says Bulwer, "the floor shook under them with a
rapid and convulsive throe--a mightier spirit than that of the Egyptian
was abroad! a giant and crushing power, before which sunk into sudden
impotence his passion and his arts. It woke--it stirred--that dread
Demon of the Earthquake," etc.[11]
"I woo no longer, thou art in my grasp,
And by the Immortals I disown, thou shalt"--