LIFE AND LETTERS OF WASHINGTON IRVING. By Pierre Irving. Vol. II.
New-York: G. P. Putnam. Boston: A. K. Loring. 1862.
We have perused this second volume of 'Irving's Life and Letters' with
even greater relish than the first, and return sincere thanks to its
editor for the zeal and skill shown in his work. Such compilations, when
not _very_ well done, are proverbially dull; it is therefore the highest
compliment which we can pay to say that the work thus far is extremely
interesting. We have in it, as in the brilliant memoir of some great man
of the world, constantly recurring glimpses of world-wide celebrities,
pictures of travel, bits of gossip of people in whom every body is
interested, the whole interwoven with the kindliest and most genial
traits of character. If Irving's works are essential to every library,
it may be said with equal truth that the 'Life and Letters' are quite as
inseparable from the works themselves.
BAYARD TAYLOR'S WORKS. NORTHERN TRAVEL. New-York: G. P. Putnam.
Boston: A. K. Loring.
Within a few years the tide of English and of American travel has flown
far more than of old over Scandinavia, a land so little known as to bear
a prestige of strange mystery to many. Books of travel describing it are
comparatively rare; it has not, like Germany or England, been 'done to
death,' and the consequence is, that a good book describing it, like
this of Taylor's, has a peculiar charm of freshness and of novelty. In
it, as in every volume of his travels, Bayard Taylor gives us the
impression that the country in question is his specialty and favorite,
the result being a thoroughly genial account of all he saw. Readers not
familiar with this series may be pleased to know that as regards
typography, illustration, and binding, it is in all respects elegant,
though furnished at an extremely moderate price.
EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. By Theodore Winthrop. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
1862.
To a certain extent novels are like dishes; while there is no dispute as
to the surpassing excellence of a few, the majority are prized
differently, according to individual tastes. Public opinion has
unanimously rated the Winthrop novels highly, some readers preferring
'Cecil Dreeme,' while to judge by the press, it would seem that 'Edwin
Brothertoft' best pleases the majority. It is certainly a book of marked
character, and full of good local historical color. The author had one
great merit--he studied from _life_ and truth, and did not rehash what
he had read in other novels, as do the majority of story-tellers at the
present day, when a romance which is _not_ crammed with palpable apings
of 'Jane Eyre' and 'Adam Bede' is becoming a rarity. In 'Edwin
Brothertoft' we have a single incident--as in 'John Brent'--the rescue
of a captive damsel by a dashing 'raid,' as the nucleus, around which
are deftly woven in many incidents, characters, and scenes, all well set
forth in the vigorous style of a young writer who was deeply interested
in his own work. That he is sometimes rather weakly grotesque, as in his
sporting with the negro dialect, which in the person of a servant he
affects to discard and yet resumes, is a trifle. That he shows
throughout the noblest sympathies and instincts of a gentleman, a
philanthropist, and a cosmopolite is, however, something which can not
be too highly praised, since it is these indications which lend a grace
and a glory to all that Winthrop wrote. _Noblesse oblige_ seems to have
been the great consciousness of his nature, and he therefore presented
in his life and writings that high type of a gentleman by birth and
culture, who without lowering himself one whit, was a reformer, a
progressive, yes, a 'radical' in all things where he conceived that the
root to be extracted was a great truth.
In many things 'Edwin Brothertoft' is most appropriate to these our
times, since its scenes are laid in that Revolutionary War for the cause
of freedom, of which this of the present day is, in fact, a repetition.
We feel in its every page the anxiety and interest of war, an American
war for the right, sweeping along through trials and sorrows. To
characterize it in few words, we may say that in it the author reminds
us of Cooper, but displays more genius and _life_ than Cooper ever did.
OUT OF HIS HEAD. By T. B. Aldrich. New-York. Carleton.
It is said that the 'grotesque' romance is going out of fashion; if this
be so, the beautiful and quaint collection of interwoven fancies before
us proves that in literature as in horticulture, the best blooms of
certain species are of the latest. Strange, indeed, is the conception of
this work--the fancied biography of one literally 'out of his head,' who
imagines himself surrounded by a world of people who act very
singularly. Madmen are never ordinary; therefore the writer has not,
while setting forth the most extraordinary fancies, once transgressed
the limits of the probable. This was a bold stroke of genius in the very
inception, and it is developed with a subtle tact which can hardly fail
to claim the cordial admiration of the most carping critic. It is true
that in using the strange aberrations of a lunatic as material for
romance, Aldrich has provoked comparison with some of the world's
greatest writers; and it is to his credit that he has met them evenly,
and that too without in any particular incurring the charge of
plagiarism. But had the _thema_ of the work been less ingenious or
striking, its defects would have been unnoticed among the beautiful
pictures, the unconscious breathings of poetry, and the sweet caprices
which twine around the strange plot, as the tendrils and leaves of the
vine cover over, yet indicate by their course the fantastic twinings of
the parent vine. It is needless to say, that we commend this most
agreeable work to our readers. We are glad to see that 'Père Antoine's
Date Palm' which has attained so great a popularity, and several other
fascinating tales by Aldrich, are incorporated into the present volume
as the 'library' of the hero.
LES MISERABLES. III. Marius. By Victor Hugo. New-York: Carleton.
'Sure an' didn't I tell ye I was a _poor_ scholar,' said the young Irish
sham-student-beggar to the gentleman who refused him alms because he
could not read. In the same strain, as it seems to us, Victor Hugo might
reply to the wearied readers of these tales: 'Why, do they not call
themselves miserable?' Miserable indeed is the 'Marius' installment now
before us--a mere sensation plot, brilliantly patched here and there
with the _purpureus pannus_, or purple rag of a bit of imperial or later
history, 'coached' up for display, but falling lamentably into what
under any other name would be called a gross imitation of Eugène Sue.
The point of the present volume, to which its scenes tend, is, of
course, a robber's den--a decoyed victim--the police in waiting, and a
tremendous leap from a window--the whole suggesting Mr. Bourcicault's
moral sensational drama, or rather its French originals, to an amusing
extent. Still the _genius_ of the author, always erratic, of course, is
shown in more than one chapter. The trials and sufferings of 'Marius,'
and his noble independence of character, as well as the peculiar and
widely differing traits of his friends the students are set forth with
great spirit, and with the intention of a good purpose. Victor Hugo is
in all his works unequal unless we except 'Hans of Iceland,' which is
completely trashy throughout; but he was never more so than in 'The
Miserables.' We have spoken of this third part as though its first title
were an illustration of the _nomen et omen_ so much believed in of old.
We may add that like the _Mois_ of Alexandre Dumas, it has simply an _s_
too much,
THE FLY-ING DUTCHMAN. By John Q. Saxe. Illustrated. New-York:
Carleton. 1862.
An amusing little series of pictures, drawn and written, setting forth
the accidents which befell a 'Dutchman' in catching a fly.
THE POEMS OF ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. With a Memoir. By Charles Eliot
Norton. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1862.
Arthur Hugh Clough was an English gentleman of high university education
and honors, and gifted with liberal and progressive views in politics,
who, after distinguishing himself somewhat in his native land, resided
for one year in this country as an instructor at Cambridge, Mass. On
returning to England to take a place in the Education Department of the
Privy Council, he wrote: 'I am rather unwilling to be re-Englished after
once attaining that higher transatlantic development. However, _il faut
s'y soumettre_, I presume, though I fear I am embarked in the foundering
ship. I hope to heaven you'll get rid of slavery, and then I shouldn't
fear but you would really 'go ahead' in the long run. As for us and our
inveterate feudalism, it is not hopeful.'
It is needless to say that an English poet with such feelings must be,
if not vigorous, liberal, and original, at least ambitious of becoming
such, and this Clough is. A vigorous naturalism, such as is becoming
half the religion and all the art of the scholars and thinkers of the
present day, inspires every page. Truthful yet picturesque, he is more
than pleasant to read, he is good _to think_, and most relishing to
_feel_ with. Had he been a meaner mind, he would have been a mere Adam
Bede-ish pre-Raffaelite in word-painting--'the Bothie of
Taber-na-vuolich,' the first poem in this volume is often photographic
in its rural views, as well as in its characters. As it is, literal
nature is to him material for fresh brave thought. Through all his
poems, owing to this simple vigorous truth, and an innate sense of
refinement, he rises head and shoulders above the 'sweet-pretty' Miss
Nancy Coventry Patmores or spasmodic Alexander Smiths or other
cotemporary English stuff of later poetry.
England has of late years deluged and wearied us so much with thousand
times told tales of herself and her social life, and her writers have
run so _exceedingly_ in ruts, that there are few really thinking men in
America who have not begun to tire woefully of her endless novels and
worn-out poetry. We could write against the whole '_connu, connu_,' and
at the end a 'deliver us'--from evil it might be, certainly from no
great temptation. Let the world believe it--it _will_ some day--English
_thought_ is at present exhausted, stagnant, and imitative. It is cursed
with mannerism, even as the Chinese are cursed, and every honest man of
mind knows it. In such a state of national art it is cheerful to open a
volume like these poems, in which one hears, as it were, the first
lark-notes of an early dawn and sees from afar a few gleams of morning
red. It is not the full light nor the great poetry which reforms and
awakes nations, but it is the forerunner in many things of such, and
will be read with great pleasure by those who long for some faint
realization of the great Nature-Art of the future.