NOVEL S.
IF novels continue to be produced at the present rate, they will soon escape criticism altogether. A literary growth of such rank luxuriance must consist in a great measure of weeds,' among which the comparatively few flowers will necessarily be buried. When the critic finds it requisite to read ten bad novels in order to discover one good one, the chances are that the good one will not be real at all ; and by and by the task of hunting for notice- able novels—as hopeless as that of seeking a needle in a bundle of hay—will be wholly given up. This will drive persons of genius and talent out of the field, and the Grub Street race will cnce more have it all to themselves. Novels will continue to be swallowed, as of yore, by those who love to feed upon such garbage; but people of intellect and taste will throw them aside unopened, and a novel will cease to be considered a subject of literary criticism.
We have lately had occasion to notice the "downward tendency" of the Novel in the scale of literature. We have been led to ap- prehend it by our examination of the produce of this prolific season ; and we can hardly hope that, as we dig through the mass before us, our misgivings will be removed. In doing this, how- ever, we shall not proceed entirely at random, so long as the in- dication of a known name on a titlepage shall afford us a chance of coming at the best among these multifarious novelties.
Following this plan, therefore, we have read four of the recent productions. Two of them are historical tales—One in a Thousand, by Mr. JAMES, and Agnes de Man Veldt, by Mr. GRATTAN; an- other is a satirical picture of manners—Plebeians and Patricians, by the author of "Old Maids and Old Bachelors ;" and the fourth is The Parricide—a wild romance, by the author of " Miserrimus."
The writers of historical works of fiction are apt to err by making them too historical. One would suppose that their prin- cipal object was to assist their readers in the study of history. But this branch of knowledge, like every other, must be gained by the use of the books which properly belong to it; and all the history which can be gleaned from the best novels of this sort, is just that superficial smattering which enables young gentlemen and ladies to talk away in society about subjects of which, in truth, they know nothing, and very often less than nothing. Fact is so jumbled up with fiction, that they have no means of distin- guishing the one from the other ; and they acquire the most erro- neous views of historical characters and events. Scorr, the great model of this species of writing, never considered himself as being under any obligation to adhere to historical truth. In his splendid Old Mortality, his misrepresentations of the character and conduct or the Scottish Covenanters and their ruthless persecutors pro- tluced a series of elaborate papers from Dr. Wears, in a religious
journal, in which the learned divine confuted and exposed them. But his pains were thrown away, and were treated, even by the
Whig editor of the Edinburgh Review, with something like good- humoured ridicule. The characters of CHARLES the Second, of Queen ELIZABETH, and many others, would be wofully misunder-
stood if taken from the delineations of Scorr : and yet who would think of blaming him for this ? His object was to make his pictures striking, and such as would combine most effectively with his imaginary creations. When he did this, his aim was accom- plished ; and he left it to the readers of history to discover the spots aud deformities, the mean and vulgar features, which would have harmonized so ill with his high-toned fictions.
In ScoTT's historical novels, moreover, his real personages are rarely involved in the interest of the tale. Those about whose fate the reader is concerned are purely fictitious. They are placed in some remarkable historical period, because the convulsions and perils of the time, pervading all ranks of society, afford materials for spirit-stirring incidents and scenes of strong passion ; and the most eminent persons or the age are introduced as influ- encing their fortunes. In this manner Scarr selects his principal characters chiefly from the middling and lower orders, whose good and ill meet with the most general sympathy. Where he does otherwise, as in the case of MARY Queen of Scots, the heroine of the Abbot, he is not successful. In the works of his imitators, and particularly in the novels before us, by Mr. JAMES and Mr. GRATTAN, the authors seek for heroes and heroines too much among the great ones of the earth ; the dramatis persona), consisting almost entirely of kings, electors, princes, prin- cesses, and noblesse in its various degrees. The personages are all too lofty, too much surrounded with pomp and cir- cumstance; their joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, arise from success or failure in state intrigues or plans of ambition,— objects which excite no corresponding feelings in the mind of the reader. In Mr. JAMES'S novel, the personal interest of the cha- racters is lost in a maze of politics ; the author's great anxiety being to lead his reader through the labyrinth of the policy and views of the factions which distracted France at the beginning of the reign of HeNay the Fourth. The heroine is an Italian princess, Beatrice of Ferrara ; and she is described as being "One in a Thou- sand," because she preserves her purity in the dissolute Court of Catherine de Medicis. She is, however, an intriguer of the first water, and has the levity of the French manners superadded to her Italian passions. She concludes her career by stabbing, with her own hand, a lover who has abandoned her for a more advan- tageous match, and then swallowing poison. But this tragical catastrophe makes no impression, because the reader's mind is not sufficiently worked up by what goes before. Henry the Fourth himself is a total failure. He is constantly kept on the stage ; yet, except a plentiful use of his favourite oath " ventre saingris," he never says or does any thing characteristic of that gallant, gay, and chivalrous monarch. How differently be would have appeared on the canvas of WALTER Scorrl The merit of the work consists in a faithful adherence to the manners of the age and country in which the scene is laid, in so far, at least, as we can form a notion of them. Its fault is dryness.
Agnes de Man Veldt is liable to similar objections. It is filled with the politics of Ilolland and Belgium in the sixteenth century; which, the author says, have a strong resemblance to those of the present day. They are equally uninteresting, and can hardly be more so. There is, however, one redeeming point in the story of this book; and it is a very great one. The hero and heroine, the Elector and Electress of Cologne, are stripped of their dominions by their revolted subjects, and reduced to absolute destitution. From that period, (though unluckily it occurs late in the work,) the tale assumes a deep interest; and the sufferings of the ill- fated pair, supported by conscious virtue and indestructible love, are very beautifully told. At the very conclusion we have a sketch of our Queen Elizabeth and her favourite Essex; the ex- Electress taking a solitary and fruitless voyage to England to solicit aid for her husband. Her short visit to our shores, and strange interview with the Queen, are described with great spirit • and it is amusing to contrast the two portraits of Elizabeth, as drawn by Scorr and by this author,—the one full of majesty and magnanimity, with a mixture of violent passion and female weak- ness; the other an odious compound of moral and physical de- formity. Mr. GRATTAN is gifted with great fluency and com- mand of language ; but he cannot close the floodgates of his eloquence ; and his conversations consist of alternations of set speeches, as wordy as the scenes of a French tragedy.
Plebeians and Patricians is a clever and amusing work. Its object seems to be to contrast the aristocracy of wealth with the aristocracy of birth. Like some of the plays of DRYDEN and other old dramatists, it contains a double plot, and traces the history of two sets of persons. One set are taken from the original generation of cotton-manufacturers, suddenly raised to great affluence by the application of ARKVIRIGHT'S machinery, and their immediate descendants; and the other from the privi- leged orders. The parvenus are made to enact the part of the beggar set on horseback. Their grotesque exhibitions of ignorance, vulgarity, and absurdity, in situations totally new to them, are exceedingly entertaining ; and the demoralizing effects of so sud- den a change of condition are well brought out. As applicable to the present race of the manufacturing aristocracy, in many of whose families great wealth has been hereditary for generations, these pictures would be gross caricatures; and so the author very
properly says but they must almost necessarily be correet-in the main, with reference to the period to which they relate. In regard to the high-born class with whom the plebeians are con- trasted, they have an immense advantage as far as externals are concerned: but there is a striking moral in the circumstance on which the story is founded,—that the heroine, a poor factory child, one of a number sent from the Foundling Hospital to a great mill, and kindly brought up by its owner, whose notice she casually attracts, turns out to be the abandoned infant of a de- bauched man of rank. The author's vein of humour is at times too coarse and broad; but, on the whole, the book will well repay the perusal.
The author of the Parricide is a sort of Gonwtre run mad. He has no small share of GODWIN'S power, but not an atom of his judgment. He confines himself entirely to the morbid anatomy of the human mind, and never represents it under the influence of a healthy feeling or a rational principle of action. The only characters are a father and son, (the others being mere rem- plissage,) filled with an unaccountable but deadly hate towards each other. The son is cruelly treated, and turned out of doors. He returns, and attempts to murder his father; who overpowers him, and coolly cuts off' his hand. They are separated for years. The son at length seeks his sire, with unabated hatred, and pro- vokes him to combat. They fight; the son is vanquished, and receives a punishment similar to the former. At last he comes upon his father as be sleeps, and splits his head with a hatchet; then writes his own life, gives himself up to justice, and is broken on the wheel. A dainty dish of horrors! The book is excessively disagreeable, and yet there is a sort of fascination about it that prevents it from being thrown aside. Better not open it ; and thus justly punish the author for persevering in the gross misap- plication of very considerable powers.
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