Chapter VI: Part 6

But a truce with such unpardonable thoughts—Miss Catharine recognized me at once, and seemed very glad to see me. She soon began to talk about her troubles, and her sorrows, and alluded in a very affecting manner to the loss of her sister, who she said had died of a broken heart in consequence of the changes made in their little patrimony; having always hoped to die, as she had lived, in her father’s house just as he had left it—“But the worst of all,” pursued Miss Catharine—“was the cutting down of the old trees.—Every stroke of the axe seemed like a blow upon our hearts. Neither of us slept a wink all that night. Poor sister Mary; she soon fretted herself to death. To think of our having to submit to these dreadful changes, all at once; when for ten years our dear father’s spectacles, were never removed from the place in which he had last laid them down.”

I attempted to offer a few words of consolation to Miss Catharine, but she wept bitterly and would not be comforted. “Ah!”—said she—“this is one of the consequences of living in a republic. Had we been still under a king, he would have known nothing about our little property, and we could have enjoyed it in our own way as long as we lived. There is one comfort, that not a creature in the states will be any the better for what _we_ shall leave behind us—Sister and I have taken care of that. We have bequeathed every article to our relations in Nova Scotia since our nephew, poor boy, was so unfortunate as to die before us. In all our trials it has been a great satisfaction to us to reflect that when everything was changing around, grace has been given us to remain faithful to our church and king.”

The loyal old lady then informed me that, on his accession to the throne, she had written a letter of congratulation to his Britannic Majesty, William the Fourth, whom she remembered having seen in Boston before the revolution, when he was there as Duke of Clarence and an officer in his father’s navy. In this epistle she had earnestly assured him that the family of Dr. Byles always were, and always would be, most true and fervent in their devotion to their liege lord and rightful sovereign the king of England.—To have attempted to argue her out of this feeling, the pride and solace of her declining life, would have been cruel; and moreover entirely useless—I did not hint to her the improbability of her letter ever having reached the royal personage to whom it was addressed.

The old lady told me that her chief occupation now was to write serious poetry, and she gave me a copy of some stanzas which she had recently composed. The verses were tolerably good, and written in a hand remarkably neat, handsome, and steady.

* * * * *

Miss Catharine Byles survived her sister Miss Mary about two years, and died of gradual decay in the summer of 1837. Her remains repose with those of her father and sister beneath the flooring of Trinity Church. They left the whole of their property to their loyalist relations in Nova Scotia, true to their long-cherished resolution that no republican should inherit the value of a farthing from them. The representative of the family is said to have come to Boston and taken possession of the bequest.

It is curious, as well as instructive, to contemplate the infinite varieties of human character, and the strange phases under which human intellect presents itself. The peculiarities of these two sisters strikingly evinced the lasting power of early impressions, almost always indelible when acting upon minds that have not been expanded by intercourse with the world. For instance—their steadfast, gratuitous and useless loyalty, cherished for monarchs whom they had never seen, and who had forgotten the very existence of Dr. Byles (if indeed they had ever remembered it) and who, of course, neither knew nor cared anything about his daughters; their rooted antipathy to the republic in which they lived, and where if they had not persisted in shutting their eyes they must have seen everything flourishing around them; the strict economy which induced them to deny themselves even the comforts of life, and their willingness to be assisted by the benevolent rather than render themselves independent by an advantageous disposal of their property. The almost idolatrous devotion with which they clung to the inanimate objects that had been familiar to them in early life, showed an intensity of feeling which was both pitied and respected by their friends, though reason perhaps would not have sanctioned its entire indulgence. By living so much alone, by visiting at no other house, by never going out of their native town, by perpetually thinking and talking over the occurrences of their youth, they had wrought themselves into a firm belief that no way was right but their own way, no opinions correct but their own opinions: and above all, that in no other dwelling-place but their paternal mansion was it possible for them to be happy or even to exist.

As a set-off to their weaknesses, their vanities and their prejudices, it gives me pleasure to bear testimony to the kindness of their deportment, the soft tones of their voices, and to the old-fashioned polish of their manners; which at once denoted them to be ladies, even in their short-gowns and petticoats.

Though, in the latter part of their lives, the daughters of Dr. Byles were subjected to the sore trial of seeing the little green lawn on which they had played when children converted into a dusty street, and the fine old trees (which would take a century to replace) demolished in a few minutes before their eyes: still they were both permitted to die beneath the same roof under which their existence had commenced. The house of their heavenly father has many mansions; and there, in their eternal abode, now that their mental vision has cleared, and their souls have been purified from the dross of mortality, they have learnt the futility of having set their hearts too steadfastly on a dwelling erected by human hands; and more than all, of fostering prejudices in favor of that system of government which, according to the signs of the times, is fast and deservedly passing away. Is it too much to hope that ere the lapse of another half century, not a being in the civilized world will render the homage of a bended knee, except to the King of Heaven.

* * * * *

SONNET.

A dream of love, too short, but ah, how dear!
Hath fled and left me sad and desolate.
Oft from my lids I dash the silent tear
And mourn as mourns the wood-dove for her mate,
Who on some branch of thunder-stricken oak
Wastes in complainings tremulous and low
Her gentle soul away. The charm is broke,
Which link’d me erst to joy. With pensive brow,
At midnight hour beneath the ruined pile,
Musing o’er change my vigil lone I keep,—
While streaming faint aslant the shattered aisle,
Soft on its moss the pillowed moonbeams sleep,
Or trim the flickering lamp and eager pore
On bard or sage in Hellas famed of yore.

B. H. B.

* * * * *

A FEW WORDS ABOUT BRAINARD.

BY EDGAR A. POE.

Among all the _pioneers_ of American literature, whether prose or poetical, there is _not one_ whose productions have not been much over-rated by his countrymen. But this fact is more especially obvious in respect to such of these pioneers as are no longer living,—nor is it a fact of so deeply transcendental a nature as only to be accounted for by the Emersons and Alcotts. In the first place, we have but to consider that gratitude, surprise, and a species of hyper-patriotic triumph have been blended, and finally confounded, with mere admiration, or appreciation, in respect to the labors of our earlier writers; and, in the second place, that Death has thrown his customary veil of the sacred over these commingled feelings, forbidding them, in a measure, to be _now_ separated or subjected to analysis. “In speaking of the deceased,” says that excellent old English Moralist, James Puckle, in his “Gray Cap for a Green Head,” “so fold up your discourse that their virtues may be outwardly shown, while their vices are wrapped up in silence.” And with somewhat too inconsiderate a promptitude have we followed the spirit of this quaint advice. The mass of American readers have been, hitherto, in no frame of mind to view with calmness, and to discuss with discrimination, the true claims of the few who were _first_ in convincing the mother country that her sons were not all brainless, as, in the plentitude of her arrogance, she, at one period, half affected and half wished to believe; and where any of these few have departed from among us, the difficulty of bringing their pretensions to the test of a proper criticism has been enhanced in a very remarkable degree. But even as concerns the living: is there any one so blind as not to see that Mr. Cooper, for example, owes much, and that Mr. Paulding, owes _all_ of his reputation as a novelist, to his early occupation of the field? Is there any one so dull as not to know that fictions which neither Mr. Paulding nor Mr. Cooper _could_ have written, are daily published by native authors without attracting more of commendation than can be crammed into a hack newspaper paragraph? And, again, is there any one so prejudiced as not to acknowledge that all this is because there is no longer either reason or wit in the query,—“Who reads an American book?” It is not because we lack the talent in which the days of Mr. Paulding exulted, but because such talent has shown itself to be common. It is not because we have _no_ Mr. Coopers; but because it has been demonstrated that we might, at any moment, have as many Mr. Coopers as we please. In fact we are now strong in our own resources. We have, at length, arrived at that epoch when our literature may and must stand on its own merits, or fall through its own defects. We have snapped asunder the leading-strings of our British Grandmamma, and, better still, we have survived the first hours of our novel freedom,—the first licentious hours of a hobbledehoy braggadocio and swagger. _At last_, then, we are in a condition to be criticised—even more, to be neglected; and the journalist is no longer in danger of being impeached for _lèse-majesté_ of the Democratic Spirit, who shall assert, with sufficient humility, that we have committed an error in mistaking “Kettell’s Specimens” for the Pentateuch, or Joseph Rodman Drake for Apollo.

The case of this latter gentleman is one which well illustrates what we have been saying. We believe it was some five years ago that Mr. Dearborn republished the “Culprit Fay,” which then, as at the period of its original issue, was belauded by the universal American press, in a manner which must have appeared ludicrous—not to speak _very_ plainly—in the eyes of all unprejudiced observers. With a curiosity much excited by comments at once so grandiloquent and so general, we procured and read the poem. What we found it we ventured to express distinctly, and at some length, in the pages of the “Southern Messenger.” It is a well-versified and sufficiently fluent composition, without high merit of any kind. Its defects are gross and superabundant. Its plot and conduct, considered in reference to its scene, are absurd. Its originality is none at all. Its imagination (and this was the great feature insisted upon by its admirers,) is but a “counterfeit presentment,”—but the shadow of the shade of that lofty quality which is, in fact, the soul of the Poetic Sentiment—but a drivelling _effort to be fanciful_—an effort resulting in a species of hop-skip-and-go-merry rhodomontade, which the uninitiated feel it a duty to call ideality, and to admire as such, while lost in surprise at the impossibility of performing at least the latter half of the duty with any thing like satisfaction to themselves. And all this we not only asserted, but without difficulty _proved_. Dr. Drake has written some beautiful poems, but the “Culprit Fay,” is not of them. We neither expected to hear any dissent from our opinions, nor did we hear any. On the contrary, the approving voice of every critic in the country whose _dictum_ we had been accustomed to respect, was to us a sufficient assurance that we had not been very grossly in the wrong. In fact the public taste was then _approaching_ the right. The truth indeed had not, as yet, made itself heard; but we had reached a point at which it had but to be plainly and boldly _put_, to be, at least tacitly, admitted.

This habit of apotheosising our literary pioneers was a most indiscriminating one. Upon _all_ who wrote, the applause was plastered with an impartiality really refreshing. Of course, the system favored the dunces at the expense of true merit; and, since there existed a certain fixed standard of exaggerated commendation to which all were adapted after the fashion of Procrustes, it is clear that the most meritorious required _the least stretching_,—in other words, that, although all were much over-rated, the deserving were over-rated in a less degree than the unworthy. Thus with Brainard:—a man of indisputable genius, who, in any more discriminate system of panegyric, would have been long ago bepuffed into Demi-Deism; for if “M’Fingal,” for example, is in reality what we have been told, the commentators upon Trumbull, as a matter of the simplest consistency, should have exalted into the seventh heaven of poetical dominion the author of the many graceful and vigorous effusions which are now lying, in a very neat little volume, before us.[3]

Yet we maintain that even these effusions have been overpraised, and materially so. It is not that Brainard has not written poems which may rank with those of any American, with the single exception of Longfellow—but that the general merit of our whole national Muse has been estimated too highly, and that the author of “The Connecticut River” has, individually, shared in the exaggeration. No poet among us has composed what would deserve the tithe of that amount of approbation so innocently lavished upon Brainard. But it would not suit our purpose just now, and in this department of the Magazine, to enter into any elaborate analysis of his productions. It so happens, however, that we open the book at a brief poem, an examination of which will stand us in good stead of this general analysis, since it is by this very poem that the admirers of its author are content to swear—since it is the fashion to cite it as his best—since thus, in short, it is the chief basis of his notoriety, if not the surest triumph of his fame.

We allude to “The Fall of Niagara,” and shall be pardoned for quoting it in full.

The thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain
While I look upward to thee. It would seem
As if God poured thee from his hollow hand,
And hung his brow upon thine awful front,
And spoke in that loud voice which seemed to him
Who dwelt in Patmos for his Saviour’s sake
The “sound of many waters,” and had bade
Thy flood to chronicle the ages back
And notch his centuries in the eternal rocks.

Deep calleth unto deep. And what are we
That hear the question of that voice sublime?
O, what are all the notes that ever rung
From war’s vain trumpet by thy thundering side?
Yea, what is all the riot man can make
In his short life to thy unceasing roar?
And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to HIM
Who drowned a world and heaped the waters far
Above its loftiest mountains?—a light wave
That breaks and whispers of its Maker’s might.

It is a very usual thing to hear these verses called not merely the best of their author, but the best which have been written on the subject of Niagara. Its positive merit appears to us only partial. We have been informed that the poet _had seen_ the great cataract before writing the lines; but the Memoir prefixed to the present edition, denies what, for our own part, we never believed; for Brainard was truly a poet, and no poet could have looked upon Niagara, in the substance, and written thus about it. If he saw it at all, it must have been in fancy—“at a distance”—εκας—as the lying Pindar says he saw Archilocus, who died ages before the villain was born.

To the two opening verses we have no objection; but it may be well observed, in passing, that had the mind of the poet been really “crowded with strange thoughts,” and not merely _engaged in an endeavor to think_ he would have entered at once upon the thoughts themselves, without allusion to the state of his brain. His subject would have left him no room for self.

The third line embodies an absurd, and impossible, not to say a contemptible image. We are called upon to conceive a similarity between the _continuous_ downward sweep of Niagara, and the momentary splashing of some definite and of course trifling quantity of water _from a hand_; for, although it is the hand of the Deity himself which is referred to, the mind is irresistibly led, by the words “poured from his hollow hand,” to that idea which has been _customarily_ attached to such phrase. It is needless to say, moreover, that the bestowing upon Deity a human form, is at best a low and most unideal conception.[4] In fact the poet has committed the grossest of errors in _likening_ the fall to _any_ material object; for the human fancy can fashion nothing which shall not be inferior in majesty to the cataract itself. Thus bathos is inevitable; and there is no better exemplification of bathos than Mr. Brainard has here given.[5]

The fourth line but renders the matter worse, for here the figure is most inartistically shifted. The handful of water becomes animate; for it has a front—that is, a forehead, and upon this forehead the Deity proceeds to hang a bow, that is, a rainbow. At the same time he “speaks in that loud voice, &c.;” and here it is obvious that the ideas of the writer are in a sad state of fluctuation; for he transfers the idiosyncrasy of the fall itself (that is to say its sound) to the one who pours it from his hand. But not content with all this, Mr. Brainard commands the flood to _keep a kind of tally_; for this is the low thought which the expression about “notching in the rocks” immediately and inevitably induces. The whole of this first division of the poem, embraces, we hesitate not to say, one of the most jarring, inappropriate, mean, and in every way monstrous assemblages of false imagery, which can be found out of the tragedies of Nat Lee, or the farces of Thomas Carlyle.

In the latter division, the poet recovers himself, as if ashamed of his previous bombast. His natural instinct (for Brainard was no artist) has enabled him _to feel_ that _subjects which surpass in grandeur all efforts of the human imagination are well depicted only in the simplest and least metaphorical language_—a proposition as susceptible of demonstration as any in Euclid. Accordingly, we find a material sinking in tone; although he does not at once, discard all imagery. The “Deep calleth unto deep” is nevertheless a great improvement upon his previous rhetoricianism. The personification of the waters above and below would be good in reference to any subject less august. The moral reflections which immediately follow, have at least the merit of simplicity: but the poet exhibits no very lofty imagination when he bases these reflections only upon the cataract’s superiority to man _in the noise it can create_; nor is the concluding idea more spirited, where the mere difference between the quantity of water which occasioned the flood, and the quantity which Niagara precipitates, is made the measure of the Almighty Mind’s superiority to that cataract which it called by a thought into existence.

But although “The Fall of Niagara” does not deserve all the unmeaning commendation it has received, there are, nevertheless, many truly beautiful poems in this collection, and even more certain evidences of poetic power. “To a Child, the Daughter of a Friend” is exceedingly graceful and terse. “To the Dead” has equal grace, with more vigor, and, moreover, a touching air of melancholy. Its melody is very rich, and in the monotonous repetition, at each stanza, of a certain rhyme, we recognise a fantastic yet true imagination. “Mr. Merry’s Lament for Long Tom” would be worthy of all praise were not its unusually beautiful rhythm an imitation from Campbell, who would deserve his high poetical rank, if only for its construction. Of the merely humorous pieces we have little to say. Such things are not _poetry_. Mr. Brainard excelled in them, and they are very good in their place; but that place is not in a collection of _poems_. The prevalent notions upon this head are extremely vague; yet we see no reason why any ambiguity should exist. Humor, with an exception to be made hereafter, is directly antagonistical to that which is the soul of the Muse proper; and the omni-prevalent belief, that melancholy is inseparable from the higher manifestations of the beautiful, is not without a firm basis in nature and in reason. But it so happens that humor and that quality which we have termed the soul of the Muse (imagination) are both essentially aided in their development by the same adventitious assistance—that of rhythm and of rhyme. Thus the only bond between humorous verse and poetry, properly so called, is that they employ in common, a certain tool. But this single circumstance has been sufficient to occasion, and to maintain through long ages, a confusion of two very distinct ideas in the brain of the unthinking critic. There is, nevertheless, an individual branch of humor which blends so happily with the ideal, that from the union result some of the finest effects of legitimate poesy. We allude to what is termed “_archness_”—a trait with which popular feeling, which is unfailingly poetic, has invested, for example, the whole character of the fairy. In the volume before us there is a brief composition entitled “The Tree Toad” which will afford a fine exemplification of our idea. It seems to have been hurriedly constructed, as if its author had felt ashamed of his light labor. But that in his heart there was a secret exultation over these verses for which his reason found it difficult to account, _we know_; and there is not a really imaginative man within sound of our voice to-day, who, upon perusal of this little “Tree Toad” will not admit it to be one of the _truest poems_ ever written by Brainard.

-----

[3] _The Poems of John G. C. Brainard. A New and Authentic Collection, with an original Memoir of his Life. Hartford: Edward Hopkins._

[4] The Humanitarians held that God was to be understood as having really a human form.—See Clarke’s Sermons, vol. 1, page 26, fol. edit.

“The drift of Milton’s argument leads him to employ language which would appear, at first sight, to verge upon their doctrine: but it will be seen immediately that he guards himself against the charge of having adopted one of the most ignorant errors of the dark ages of the church.”—Dr. Sumner’s Notes on Milton’s “Christian Doctrine.”

The opinion could never have been very general. Andeus, a Syrian of Messopotamia, who lived in the fourth century, was condemned for the doctrine, as heretical. His few disciples were called Anthropmorphites. _See Du Pin._

[5] It is remarkable that Drake, of whose “Culprit Fay,” we have just spoken is, perhaps, the sole poet who has employed, in the description of Niagara, imagery which does not produce a pathetic impression. In one of his minor poems he has these magnificent lines—

How sweet ’twould be, _when all the air_
_In moonlight swims_, along the river
To couch upon the grass and hear
Niagara’s everlasting voice
Far in the deep blue West away;
That dreamy and poetic noise
We mark not in the glare of day—
Oh, how unlike its torrent-cry
When o’er the brink the tide is driven
_As if the vast and sheeted sky_
_In thunder fell from Heaven!_

* * * * *

A DREAM OF THE DEAD.

BY G. HILL, AUTHOR OF “TITANIA’S BANQUET.”

Who, when my thoughts at midnight deep,
And senses drowned in slumber lie,
And star and moon their still watch keep,
Is imaged to my sleeping eye?
The gems amid the braids that ’twine
The dark locks from her pale brow thrown,
Faintly, as dews by eve wept, shine.
Her cheek—its living tints are flown.

Sure I should know that fond, fixed gaze,
Those hands whose fairy palms infold
Gently my own, the smile that plays
Around those lips now pale and cold.
O! ever thus, as Night repeats
Her silent star-watch, come to me!
More dear than all which living greets
My waking eye, a dream of thee.

* * * * *

THE DREAM IS PAST.

COMPOSED BY

STEPHEN GLOVER.

_Philadelphia_: John F. Nunns, _184 Chesnut Street_.

The dream is past, and with it fled,
The hopes that once my passion fed;
And darkly die, mid grief and pain,
The joys which gone come not again.

My soul in silence and in tears,
Has cherish’d now for many years,
A love for one who does not know
The thoughts that in my bosom glow.

Oh! cease my heart, thy throbbing hide,
Another soon will be his bride;
And hope’s last faint, but cheering ray,
Will then for ever pass away.

They cannot see the silent tear,
That falls unchecked when none are near;
Nor do they mark the smother’d sigh
That heaves my breast when they are by.
I know my cheek is paler now,
And smiles no longer deck my brow,

’Tis youth’s decay, ’twill soon begin
To tell the thoughts that dwell within.
Oh! let me rouse my sleeping pride,
And from his gaze my feelings hide;
He shall not smile to think that I
With love for him could pine and die.

* * * * *

REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

_Barnaby Rudge; By Charles Dickens, (Boz) Author of “The Old
Curiosity-Shop,” “Pickwick,” “Oliver Twist,” etc. etc. With
numerous Illustrations, by Cattermole, Browne & Sibson. Lea &
Blanchard: Philadelphia._

We often hear it said, of this or of that proposition, that it may be good in theory, but will not answer in practice; and in such assertions we find the substance of all the sneers at Critical Art which so gracefully curl the upper lips of a tribe which is beneath it. We mean the small geniuses—the literary Titmice—animalculae which judge of merit solely by _result_, and boast of the solidity, tangibility and infallibility of the test which they employ. The worth of a work is most accurately estimated, they assure us, by the number of those who peruse it; and “does a book sell?” is a query embodying, in their opinion, all that need be said or sung on the topic of its fitness for sale. We should as soon think of maintaining, in the presence of these creatures, the _dictum_ of Anaxagoras, that snow is black, as of disputing, for example, the profundity of that genius which, in a run of five hundred nights, has rendered itself evident in “London Assurance.” “What,” cry they, “are critical precepts to us, or to anybody? Were we to observe all the critical rules in creation we should still be unable to write a good book”—a point, by the way, which we shall not now pause to deny. “Give us _results_,” they vociferate, “for we are plain men of common sense. We contend for fact instead of fancy—for practice in opposition to theory.”

The mistake into which the Titmice have been innocently led, however, is precisely that of dividing the practice which they would uphold, from the theory to which they would object. They should have been told in infancy, and thus prevented from exposing themselves in old age, that theory and practice are in so much _one_, that the former implies or includes the latter. A theory is only good as such, in proportion to its reducibility to practice. If the practice fail, it is because the theory is imperfect. To say what they are in the daily habit of saying—that such or such a matter may be good in theory but is false in practice,—is to perpetrate a bull—to commit a paradox—to state a contradiction in terms—in plain words, to tell a lie _which is a lie at sight_ to the understanding of anything bigger than a Titmouse.

But we have no idea, just now, of persecuting the Tittlebats by too close a scrutiny into their little opinions. It is not our purpose, for example, to press them with so grave a weapon as the _argumentum ad absurdum_, or to ask them why, if the popularity of a book be in fact the measure of its worth, we should not be at once in condition to admit the inferiority of “Newton’s Principia” to “Hoyle’s Games;” of “Ernest Maltravers” to “Jack-the-Giant-Killer,” or “Jack Sheppard,” or “Jack Brag;” and of “Dick’s Christian Philosopher” to “Charlotte Temple,” or the “Memoirs of de Grammont,” or to one or two dozen other works which must be nameless. Our present design is but to speak, at some length, of a book which in so much concerns the Titmice, that it affords them the very kind of demonstration which they chiefly affect—_practical_ demonstration—of the fallacy of one of their favorite dogmas; we mean the dogma that no work of fiction can fully suit, at the same time, the critical and the popular taste; in fact, that the disregarding or contravening of Critical Rule is absolutely essential to success, beyond a certain and very limited extent, with the public at large. And if, in the course of our random observations—for we have no space for systematic review—it should appear, incidentally, that the vast popularity of “Barnaby Rudge” must be regarded less as the measure of its value, than as the legitimate and inevitable result of certain well-understood critical propositions reduced by genius into practice, there will appear nothing more than what has before become apparent in the “Vicar of Wakefield” of Goldsmith, or in the “Robinson Crusoe” of De Foe—nothing more, in fact, than what is a truism to all but the Titmice.

Those who know us will not, from what is here premised, suppose it our intention, to enter into any wholesale _laudation_ of “Barnaby Rudge.” In truth, our design may appear, at a cursory glance, to be very different indeed. Boccalini, in his “Advertisements from Parnassus,” tells us that a critic once presented Apollo with a severe censure upon an excellent poem. The God asked him for the beauties of the work. He replied that he only troubled himself about the errors. Apollo presented him with a sack of unwinnowed wheat, and bade him pick out all the chaff for his pains. Now we have not fully made up our minds that the God was in the right. We are not sure that the limit of critical duty is not very generally misapprehended. _Excellence_ may be considered an axiom, or a proposition which becomes self-evident just in proportion to the clearness or precision with which it is _put_. If it fairly exists, in this sense, it requires no farther elucidation. It is not excellence if it need to be demonstrated as such. To point out too particularly the beauties of a work, is to admit, tacitly, that these beauties are not wholly admirable. Regarding, then, excellence as that which is capable of self-manifestation, it but remains for the critic to show when, where, and how it fails in becoming manifest; and, in this showing, it will be the fault of the book itself if what of beauty it contains be not, at least, placed in the fairest light. In a word, we may assume, notwithstanding a vast deal of pitiable cant upon this topic, that in pointing out frankly the errors of a work, we do nearly all that is critically necessary in displaying its merits. In teaching what perfection _is_, how, in fact, shall we more rationally proceed than in specifying what it _is not_?

The plot of “Barnaby Rudge” runs thus: About a hundred years ago, Geoffrey Haredale and John Chester were schoolmates in England—the former being the scape-goat and drudge of the latter. Leaving school, the boys become friends, with much of the old understanding. Haredale loves; Chester deprives him of his mistress. The one cherishes the most deadly hatred; the other merely contemns and avoids. By routes widely different both attain mature age. Haredale, remembering his old love, and still cherishing his old hatred, remains a bachelor and is poor. Chester, among other crimes, is guilty of the seduction and heartless abandonment of a gypsy-girl, who, after the desertion of her lover, gives birth to a son, and, falling into evil courses, is finally hung at Tyburn. The son is received and taken charge of, at an inn called the Maypole, upon the borders of Epping forest, and about twelve miles from London. This inn is kept by one John Willet, a burley-headed and very obtuse little man, who has a son, Joe, and who employs his _protégé_, under the single name of Hugh, as perpetual hostler at the inn. Hugh’s father marries, in the meantime, a rich _parvenue_, who soon dies, but not before having presented Mr. Chester with a boy, Edward. The father, (a thoroughly selfish man-of-the-world, whose model is Chesterfield,) educates this son at a distance, seeing him rarely, and calling him to the paternal residence, at London, only when he has attained the age of twenty-four or five. He, the father, has, long ere this time, spent the fortune brought him by his wife, having been living upon his wits and a small annuity for some eighteen years. The son is recalled chiefly that by marrying an heiress, on the strength of his own personal merit and the reputed wealth of old Chester, he may enable the latter to continue his gayeties in old age. But of this design, as well as of his poverty, Edward is kept in ignorance for some three or four years after his recall; when the father’s discovery of what he considers an inexpedient love-entanglement on the part of the son, induces him to disclose the true state of his affairs, as well as the real tenor of his intentions.

Now the love-entanglement of which we speak, is considered inexpedient by Mr. Chester for two reasons—the first of which is, that the lady beloved is the orphan niece of his old enemy, Haredale, and the second is, that Haredale (although in circumstances which have been much and very unexpectedly improved during the preceding twenty-two years) is still insufficiently wealthy to meet the views of Mr. Chester.

We say that, about twenty-two years before the period in question, there came an unlooked-for change in the worldly circumstances of Haredale. This gentleman has an elder brother, Reuben, who has long possessed the family inheritance of the Haredales, residing at a mansion called “The Warren,” not far from the Maypole-Inn, which is itself a portion of the estate. Reuben _is a widower_, with one child, a daughter, Emma. Besides this daughter, there are living with him a gardener, a steward (whose name is Rudge) and _two_ women servants, one of whom is the wife of Rudge. On the night of the nineteenth of March, 1733, Rudge murders his master for the sake of a large sum of money which he is known to have in possession. During the struggle, Mr. Haredale grasps the cord of an alarm-bell which hangs within his reach, but succeeds in sounding it only once or twice, when it is severed by the knife of the ruffian, who then, completing his bloody business, and securing the money, proceeds to quit the chamber. While doing this, however, he is disconcerted by meeting the gardener, whose pallid countenance evinces suspicion of the deed committed. The murderer is thus forced to kill his fellow servant. Having done so, the idea strikes him of transferring the burden of the crime from himself. He dresses the corpse of the gardener in his own clothes, puts upon its finger his own ring and in its pocket his own watch—then drags it to a pond in the grounds, and throws it in. He now returns to the house, and, disclosing all to his wife, requests her to become a partner in his flight. Horror-stricken, she falls to the ground. He attempts to raise her. She seizes his wrist, _staining her hand with blood in the attempt_. She renounces him forever; yet promises to conceal the crime. Alone, he flees the country. The next morning, Mr. Haredale being found murdered, and the steward and gardener being both missing, both are suspected. Mrs. Rudge leaves The Warren, and retires to an obscure lodging in London (where she lives upon an annuity allowed her by Haredale) having given birth, _on the very day after the murder_, to a son, Barnaby Rudge, who proves an idiot, who bears upon his wrist a red mark, and who is born possessed with a maniacal horror of blood.

Some months since the assassination having elapsed, what appears to be the corpse of Rudge is discovered, and the outrage is attributed to the gardener. Yet not universally:—for, as Geoffrey Haredale comes into possession of the estate, there are not wanting suspicions (fomented by Chester) of his own participation in the deed. This taint of suspicion, acting upon his hereditary gloom, together with the natural grief and horror of the atrocity, embitters the whole life of Haredale. He secludes himself at The Warren, and acquires a monomaniac acerbity of temper relieved only by love of his beautiful niece.

Time wears away. Twenty-two years pass by. The niece has ripened into womanhood, and loves young Chester without the knowledge of her uncle or the youth’s father. Hugh has grown a stalwart man—the type of man _the animal_, as his father is of man the ultra-civilized. Rudge, the murderer, returns, urged to his undoing by Fate. He appears at the Maypole and inquires stealthily of the circumstances which have occurred at The Warren in his absence. He proceeds to London, discovers the dwelling of his wife, threatens her with the betrayal of her idiot son into vice and extorts from her the bounty of Haredale. Revolting at such appropriation of such means, the widow, with Barnaby, again seeks The Warren, renounces the annuity, and, refusing to assign any reason for her conduct, states her intention of quitting London forever, and of burying herself in some obscure retreat—a retreat which she begs Haredale not to attempt discovering. When he seeks her in London the next day, she is gone; and there are no tidings, either of herself or of Barnaby, _until the expiration of five years_—which bring the time up to that of the Celebrated “No Popery” Riots of Lord George Gordon.

In the meanwhile, and immediately subsequent to the re-appearance of Rudge; Haredale and the elder Chester, each heartily desirous of preventing the union of Edward and Emma, have entered into a covenant, the result of which is that, by means of treachery on the part of Chester, permitted on that of Haredale, the lovers misunderstand each other and are estranged. Joe, also, the son of the innkeeper, Willet, having been coquetted with, to too great an extent, by Dolly Varden, (the pretty daughter of one Gabriel Varden, a locksmith of Clerkenwell, London) and having been otherwise mal-treated at home, enlists in his Majesty’s army and is carried beyond seas, to America; not returning until towards the close of the riots. Just before their commencement, Rudge, in a midnight prowl about the scene of his atrocity, is encountered by an individual who had been familiar with him in earlier life, while living at The Warren. This individual, terrified at what he supposes, very naturally, to be the ghost of the murdered Rudge, relates his adventure to his companions at the Maypole, and John Willet conveys the intelligence, forthwith, to Mr. Haredale. Connecting the apparition, in his own mind, with the peculiar conduct of Mrs. Rudge, this gentleman imbibes a suspicion, at once, of the true state of affairs. This suspicion (which he mentions to no one) is, moreover, very strongly confirmed by an occurrence happening to Varden, the locksmith, who, visiting the woman late one night, finds her in communion of a nature apparently most confidential, with a ruffian whom the locksmith knows to be such, without knowing the man himself. Upon an attempt, on the part of Varden, to seize this ruffian, he is thwarted by Mrs. R.; and upon Haredale’s inquiring minutely into the personal appearance of the man, he is found to accord with Rudge. We have already shown that the ruffian was in fact Rudge himself. Acting upon the suspicion thus aroused, Haredale watches, by night, alone, in the deserted house formerly occupied by Mrs. R. in hope of here coming upon the murderer, and makes other exertions with the view of arresting him; but all in vain.

It is, also, at the conclusion _of the five years_, that the hitherto uninvaded retreat of Mrs. Rudge is disturbed by a message from her husband, demanding money. He has discovered her abode by accident. Giving him what she has at the time, she afterwards eludes him, and hastens, with Barnaby, to bury herself in the crowd of London, until she can find opportunity again to seek retreat in some more distant region of England. But the riots have now begun. The idiot is beguiled into joining the mob, and, becoming separated from his mother (who, growing ill through grief, is borne to a hospital) meets with his old playmate Hugh, and becomes with him a ringleader in the rebellion.

The riots proceed. A conspicuous part is borne in them by one Simon Tappertit, a fantastic and conceited little apprentice of Varden’s, and a sworn enemy to Joe Willet, who has rivalled him in the affection of Dolly. A hangman, Dennis, is also very busy amid the mob. Lord George Gordon, and his secretary, Gashford, with John Grueby, his servant, appear, of course, upon the scene. Old Chester, who, during the five years, has become Sir John, instigates Gashford, who has received personal insult from Haredale, (a catholic and consequently obnoxious to the mob) instigates Gashford to procure the burning of The Warren, and to abduct Emma during the excitement ensuing. The mansion is burned, (Hugh, who also fancies himself wronged by Haredale, being chief actor in the outrage) and Miss H. carried off, in company with Dolly, who had long lived with her, and whom Tappertit abducts upon his own responsibility. Rudge, in the meantime, finding the eye of Haredale upon him, (since he has become aware of the watch kept nightly at his wife’s,) goaded by the dread of solitude, and fancying that his sole chance of safety lies in joining the rioters, hurries upon their track to the doomed Warren. He arrives too late—the mob have departed. Skulking about the ruins, he is discovered by Haredale, and finally captured, without a struggle, within the glowing walls of the very chamber in which the deed was committed. He is conveyed to prison, where he meets and recognises Barnaby, who had been captured as a rioter. The mob assail and burn the jail. The father and son escape. Betrayed by Dennis, both are again retaken, and Hugh shares their fate. In Newgate, Dennis, through accident, discovers the parentage of Hugh, and an effort is made in vain to interest Chester in behalf of his son. Finally, Varden procures the pardon of Barnaby; but Hugh, Rudge and Dennis are hung. At the eleventh hour, Joe returns from abroad with one arm. In company with Edward Chester, he performs prodigies of valor (during the last riots) on behalf of the government. The two, with Haredale and Varden, rescue Emma and Dolly. A double marriage, of course, takes place; for Dolly has repented her fine airs, and the prejudices of Haredale are overcome. Having killed Chester in a duel, he quits England forever, and ends his days in the seclusion of an Italian convent. Thus, after summary disposal of the understrappers, ends the drama of “Barnaby Rudge.”

We have given, as may well be supposed, but a very meagre outline of the story, and we have given it in the simple or natural sequence. That is to say, we have related the events, as nearly as might be, in the order of their occurrence. But this order would by no means have suited the purpose of the novelist, whose design has been to maintain the secret of the murder, and the consequent mystery which encircles Rudge, and the actions of his wife, until the catastrophe of his discovery by Haredale. The _thesis_ of the novel may thus be regarded as based upon curiosity. Every point is so arranged as to perplex the reader, and whet his desire for elucidation:—for example, the first appearance of Rudge at the Maypole; his questions; his persecution of Mrs. R.; the ghost seen by the frequenter of the Maypole; and Haredale’s impressive conduct in consequence. What _we_ have told, in the very beginning of our digest, in regard to the shifting of the gardener’s dress, is sedulously kept from the reader’s knowledge until he learns it from Rudge’s own confession in jail. We say sedulously; for, _the intention once known_, the _traces_ of the design can be found upon every page. There is an amusing and exceedingly ingenious instance at page 145, where Solomon Daisy describes his adventure with the ghost.

“It was a ghost—a spirit,” cried Daisy.

“Whose?” they all three asked together.

In the excess of his emotion (for he fell back trembling in his
chair and waved his hand as if entreating them to question him
no farther) _his answer was lost upon all_ but old John Willet,
who happened to be seated close beside him.

“Who!” cried Parkes and Tom Cobb—“Who was it?”

“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Willet, after a long pause, “you needn’t
ask. The likeness of a murdered man. This is the nineteenth of
March.”

A profound silence ensued.

The impression here skilfully conveyed is, that the ghost seen is that of Reuben Haredale; and the mind of the not-too-acute reader is at once averted from the true state of the case—from the murderer, Rudge, living in the body.

Now there can be no question that, by such means as these, many points which are comparatively insipid in the natural sequence of our digest, and which would have been comparatively insipid even if given in full detail in a natural sequence, are endued with the interest of mystery; but neither can it be denied that a vast many more points are at the same time deprived of all effect, and become null, through the impossibility of comprehending them without the key. The author, who, cognizant of his plot, writes with this cognizance continually operating upon him, and thus _writes to himself_ in spite of himself, does not, of course, feel that much of what is effective to his own informed perception, must necessarily be lost upon his uninformed readers; and he himself is never in condition, as regards his own work, to bring the matter to test. But the reader may easily satisfy himself of the validity of our objection. Let him _re-peruse_ “Barnaby Rudge,” and, with a pre-comprehension of the mystery, these points of which we speak break out in all directions like stars, and throw quadruple brilliance over the narrative—a brilliance which a correct taste will at once declare unprofitably sacrificed at the shrine of the keenest interest of mere mystery.

The design of _mystery_, however, being once determined upon by an author, it becomes imperative, first, that no undue or inartistical means be employed to conceal the secret of the plot; and, secondly, that the secret be well kept. Now, when, at page 16, we read that “the body of _poor Mr. Rudge, the steward, was found_” months after the outrage, &c. we see that Mr. Dickens has been guilty of no misdemeanor against Art in stating what was not the fact; since the falsehood is put into the mouth of Solomon Daisy, and given merely as the impression of this individual and of the public. The writer has not asserted it in his own person, but ingeniously conveyed an idea (false in itself, yet a belief in which is necessary for the effect of the tale) by the mouth of one of his characters. The case is different, however, when Mrs. Rudge is repeatedly denominated “the widow.” It is the author who, himself, frequently so terms her. This is disingenuous and inartistical: accidentally so, of course. We speak of the matter merely by way of illustrating our point, and as an oversight on the part of Mr. Dickens.

That the secret be well kept is obviously necessary. A failure to preserve it until the proper moment of _dénouement_, throws all into confusion, so far as regards the _effect_ intended. If the mystery leak out, against the author’s will, his purposes are immediately at odds and ends; for he proceeds upon the supposition that certain impressions _do_ exist, which do _not_ exist, in the mind of his readers. We are not prepared to say, so positively as we could wish, whether, by the public at large, the whole _mystery_ of the murder committed by Rudge, with the identity of the Maypole ruffian with Rudge himself, was fathomed at any period previous to the period intended, or, if so, whether at a period so early as materially to interfere with the interest designed; but we are forced, through sheer modesty, to suppose this the case; since, by ourselves individually, the secret was distinctly understood immediately upon the perusal of the story of Solomon Daisy, which occurs at the seventh page of this volume of three hundred and twenty-three. In the number of the “Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post,” for May the 1st, 1841, (the tale having then only begun) will be found a _prospective notice_ of some length, in which we made use of the following words—

That Barnaby is the son of the murderer may not appear evident
to our readers—but we will explain. The person murdered is Mr.
Reuben Haredale. He was found assassinated in his bed-chamber.
His steward (Mr. Rudge, senior,) and his gardener (name not
mentioned) are missing. At first both are suspected. ‘Some
months afterward,’ here we use the words of the story—‘the
steward’s body, scarcely to be recognised but by his clothes,
and the watch and ring he wore—was found at the bottom of a
piece of water in the grounds, with a deep gash in the breast
where he had been stabbed by a knife. He was only partly
dressed; and all people agreed that he had been sitting up
reading in his own room, where there were many traces of blood,
and was suddenly fallen upon and killed, before his master.’

Now, be it observed, it is not the author himself who asserts
that _the steward’s body was found_; he has put the words in the
mouth of one of his characters. His design is to make it appear,
in the _dénouement_, that the steward, Rudge, first murdered the
gardener, then went to his master’s chamber, murdered _him_, was
interrupted by his (Rudge’s) wife, whom he seized and held _by
the wrist_, to prevent her giving the alarm—that he then, after
possessing himself of the booty desired, returned to the
gardener’s room, exchanged clothes with him, put upon the corpse
his own watch and ring, and secreted it where it was afterwards
discovered at so late a period that the features could not be
identified.

The differences between our pre-conceived ideas, as here stated, and the actual facts of the story, will be found immaterial. The gardener was murdered not before but after his master; and that Rudge’s wife seized _him_ by the wrist, instead of his seizing _her_, has so much the air of a mistake on the part of Mr. Dickens, that we can scarcely speak of our own version as erroneous. The grasp of a murderer’s bloody hand on the wrist of a woman _enceinte_, would have been more likely to produce the effect described (and this every one will allow) than the grasp of the hand of the woman upon the wrist of the assassin. We may therefore say of our supposition as Talleyrand said of some cockney’s bad French—_que s’il ne soit pas Français, assurément donc il le doit être_—that if we did not rightly prophesy, yet, at least, our prophecy _should have been_ right.