THE FALL OF THE NAN SOLING.
A LIMITED survey of literature will show that to succeed in fiction an author must have a real knowledge of the life he undertakes to de- scribe, or the manners must be analogous to those with which he is ac- tually familiar. The chefs d'ceuvre of Cervantes, Le Sage, Smollett, and Fielding, painted contemporary manners ; and with some qualification the same may be said of Scott : for the kind of life exhibited in his Scotch novels he had himself seen in his youth ; in his remoter historical ro- mances, the opinion of the times, originating as it did in feudality and chivalry, was of the same genus as that of his own ; and he had studied its original authorities with a zealous zest, which saturated his mind with the spirit of those bygone ages. Still we think it will be found, on a close examination, that Ivanhoe, and even Kenilworth, however bril- liant and skilful, are inferior in truth of character to those fictions that range within about a century of his own times and belong to his own country. When he attempted nations of whom he had no personal ex- perience, and where his reading was slight and for the nonce, his com- parative failure was complete. Even in tragedy, where passion and general nature are to be presented, it is only needful to turn to Dryden, Rowe, and Lee, to observe how remote subjects fare in their hands. The art of the playwright may construct a plot and contrive situations ; the power of the poet may give force and elevation to the thoughts and dic- tion; but the essential substance is commonplace run mad, or the echo of assumed conventionalisms. Whether ancient or European manners during the dark ages ever can be painted with the spirit of life and the appearance of verisimilitude, may be doubted. It was not till Morier and Fraser that we had any delineations of Oriental life which carried an idea of truth, or consequently excited much interest, except among the ignorant, who measure everything by their own modicum of knowledge; and the few subsequent writers who have attempted the same subjects with any degree of success have all been personally acquainted with Asia.
Whatever difficulties relate to the remoter periods of time or place that we have indicated are immeasurably increased as regards the Chinese. Isolated as they have hitherto been, no one can have a knowledge of them
except in their holyday manners; and their difference in blood, character, and the very structure of their language, is so great as to remove all sympathy from the mind of the reader, even if the daily life were truly delineated. We hardly know a more difficult task for a great genius, who should be endowed with the requisite knowledge, than to construct a Chinese fiction or poem. He would have to change so much to adapt the opinions and practices of that artificial and ceremonious people to what we at least are pleased to consider our more natural ideas, that the distinctive character would be apt to escape. No doubt, the spirit may be retained under a considerable change of form, as the chemist preserves the fragrance of the flower in an essential oil ; but who save Shakspere has done this ?
To choose a Chinese subject for an historical romance, argues more of presumption than qualification ; unless we take Mr. Lymburner's ex- cuse of a "young author" as a natural answer. The poet destined to great things often begins with an epic in his boyhood; the author in his teens mostly selects a tragedy as his literary effort ; and even the tyro in the mechanical branches of art, feeling the obstacles in the exercises adapted to him, is always for trying something so advanced that it seems easy because he cannot comprehend its difficulties. Hence it is possible enough that Mr. Lymburner may have thought the unhackneyed subject of China a favourable theme for romance, without perceiving the various difficulties that beset it; so that a great quantity of reading and industry has been thrown away. References to authorities on Chinese history or customs stud the foot of the page more frequently than is usual with the majority of modern historians, and nearly two hundred and fifty appendix notes explain obscure allusions in the text,—as if poetry and romance were a something to be elucidated, instead of an appeal to pre- existing feelings. The structure also is as faulty as might be supposed. In a true novel, manners, or at least customs, are merely the accessories of story and characters : in The Fall of the Nan Strang these last are subordinate to modes and descriptions, which are not presented with the vividness of impressions from nature, but laboriously composed from authority, and inserted without regard to their effect. Even a second- rate person cannot move without an elaborate description of his lodgings and retinue: when an incident is laid in town or country, a quasi-official report is made upon the place, before the incident itself is permitted to appear : many of these scenes have little or no bearing upon the true for- tunes of the heroes and heroines : in short, the accidental and subordinate take the place of the principal. The feelings and sentiments of the per- sons are, as might be iniagined, rather those of Europe in masquerade than true Chinese; and there is a felt if not a visible incongruity, inas- much as the scene is laid in a remote period, and the hard copies seem taken from the present day. Mr. Lymburner appears to have some power in working up an effective ineident,—though the best things in this way are not exactly accordant with present notions of English pro- priety; consisting of scenes with a courtesan, and in a Tartar's harem, where impending violence seems threatening one of the heroines, who has been forcibly carried off. The book also exhibits great pains in collect- ing the materials ; but the author wants the fire necessary to sublimate his matter, and the imagination to endow it with wholeness and vitality. The hard style and barbarous forms on china are easily enough imitated, but the porcelain itself is another affair.
The downfall of the branch of the dynasty of Sonng, which is the his- torical subject of the book, took place in the last half of the thirteenth century of our sera; when the Tartar Monarch, Kublai Khan, assisted by the corrupt and disorganized state of the Chinese empire, and the trea- chery, cowardice, and incapacity of the Prime Minister, Kyatsetao, was enabled to overthrow it. The first heroine, Luseynah, is a daughter of Luseufu, a rival of Kyatsetao; the hero, Tkanghia, a military Mandarin, whom the chief Minister would corrupt to gain. The elements of difficulty, which the unscrupulous arts of Kyatsetao create, are further increased by the abduction of Luseynah and her friend by the Minister of Kublai, their presentation to the Monarch himself, and their rescue by Tkanghia and a Mogul friend, who have reciprocally saved each other's lives and vowed an eternal friendship. We suppose that a double marriage will finally wind up all. Mr. Lymburner has sufficient confidence in his Chinese readings to suppose that they may possibly sustain six volumes; though the real points of the tale might in skilful hands have been presented in one volume, and the climax is clearly touched already.
As an example of Mr. Lymburner's vigorous style of description, we extract a scene from a night attack, when Leeyunnian, the courtesan, forsaken by the hero, has leagued with the Tartars to betray the city, and drawn the Minister, Luseufu, into a tower under pretence of giving him information.
" ' Treason !' shouted Luseufu, worthy inspector of the fourth hien, hither. Treason ! treason ! guards ! assistance ! ' " Treason ! treason I' from tower to tower, round the walls, from bridge to bridge, from sentry to sentry, the ill-omened words sped. Innumerable gongs responded to the cry, and summoned the military from their quarters to their posts. Across the Slim the echoes sped, and bid the fisherman forsake his net and line. The terror-stricken citizen leaped from his bed, and prostrated himself before his household divinity; and brighter burned the fire on the summit of the tower, as though the flames knew the object for which they had been kindled, and sought to leap to heaven before witnessing the acts of fiends in human garb.
"Luseufu, approaching the exterior parapet, gazed below. With deafening shouts, amass of Tatar cavalry dashed to the brink of the ditch, that, deep and full of water, surrounded the town. The stone bridge that formerly spanned it in this quarter had been removed, and a wooden draw-bridge substituted in its place. This was raised at night, and its keys intrusted to a Clan. But treason had obviated this difficulty. Some barges lay moored together, and offered a passage to the assailants; who, dismounting, hastened to the attack, whilst some of their comrades commenced casting fascines and bags of sand into the water, so as to form another and a broader passage; whilst others, in mere wanton fury, dis- charged their arrows at the battlements.
" A ladder was already fixed against the wall, already its lower rounds were crowded, when Lnseufn grasped it and hurled it below. Down it fell, crushing and wounding some score of assailants; whilst from the crowd burst forth a simultaneous cry of surprise and passion, that-drowned the agonizing cry of the maimed wretches, who were instantly trodden under foot.
"Supposing the ladder's fall to have been the effect of accident, another was immediately raised in its place; and was so instantaneously crowded, that the weight n. it was too great for, and defied the exertions of, the Minister. ' Oh, Tyen!' e cried, as he passed his sleeve across his brow, and wiped the damp that his exertions as much as his agitation had gathered there; is there not left
one single blast in the arsenal of the winds, such as hurled the presumptuous Mangu down from the walls of Hocheyu ? Ah ! these,' he continued, as his eye fell upon one of the heaps of stones we have already said were gathered on the walls to meet similar emergencies with the present. Seizing a mass of rock, ho bore it to the verge of the wall, poised it an instant over the ladder, crowded to its topmost round, and then hurled the missive down. "If from a vessel beleagured by the storm, the mariner were to cast a pebble amid the waters, it would no more subdue their menacing crests, than could that momentary check still the fury of the Tatar host. Another and another ladder was raised. Regardless of the missiles that flew past him, unconscious even that he was wounded, Luseufn still endeavoured to defend the wall. His exertions were vain. The foremost of the enemy had already gained the ramparts, and rushed upon the defenceless Minister, designing to sacrifice him to the maneaof his numerous comrades who lay below slaughtered by his single band: but his hour was not come; succour was at hand.
" Though it has occupied us a considerable time to describe, yet from the mo- ment of the attack but a few minutes had elapsed. Kaohe, the instant he had heard the alarm, had hurried to the gateway; where, for some short time, he vainly sought the stairs to ascend the wall; for no sooner had the Minister's attendant heard the notes of war, than be prudently fled. Having at last. found the steps, the inspector, followed by his little troop, hastily sprang up them, and with load cries of Ouang-some, ten thousand years I' precipitated themselves upon the foe, who for a moment recoiled before their vigorous attack; but presently, thrust for- ward by those who crowded upon them from behind, and ashamed of yielding to such a handful of opponents, they rushed upon the gallant little baud.
" Kaohe, with all his faults, was no coward. Perhaps courage was the only redeeming virtue he might have offered in extenuation of many a peccadillo. In his one person seemed to reside a little host. By his words and actions well he proved this was not the first occasion in which his right hand had distinguished itself. Now with a wave of his sabre he cut down a stalwart opponent, or inter- posed his blade to defend some comrade, less inured to such rude encounters. Now he yelled forth the battle-cry, or some insult to his enemies, that neither they nor his friends comprehended, from its being uttered in the Fokien dialect. " Minister,' he said to Luseufu, who had provided himself with a weapon, and at whose side he found himself during a momentary pause in the conflict, occa- sioned by the surprise, amounting almost to superstitions fear, with which the Tatars had beheld the effects of one of his blows, that had separated the head from one and the arm from another of their comrades—' Minister, had I now with me the ship's crew with which I traversed the Eastern Ocean, this fight would have a different conclusion. But every drop of our blood must be diluted by a gallon from the veins of these fish-skin-defended devils.' " One half of the party were down, and several of the survivors were so des- perately wounded as scarcely to be able to raise their weapons. Despair had fastened on the hearts of all but the master spirit of the fight, when, above the uproar, rose tU loud clear cry of Ouang-soue,' proceeding from a party of soldiery, hastily collected from the neighbouring towers, and who, animated by their officers, advanced along the ramparts, waving their sabres and with their spears in rest. With a desperate effort, Lusenfen, Kaohe, and all that remained of his band, fought their way through the crowd that separated them from their Mends; who, fortunately, recognized their accoutrements in time not to stain their weapons with their blood.
" The part he had had in the fight had but excited the ardour of Kaohe; who placed himself in the foremost of the ranks that bore down upon the Tatars. The contest for some time continued breast to breast, sabre to sabre; but reinforce- ments momentarily arriving to the assistance of the Chinese, these last succeeded in driving from off their walls the last of the enemy who had planted their feet upon them, excepting a few for whose retreat the door of the gate-tower had been opened, and who endeavoured to defend themselves with what missiles came to hand.
" Their resistance was not for long. The lower story, into which the Chinese forced their way, was filled with faggots, that were speedily ignited. With yells and screams the wretched Tatars prayed for mercy, and then sank suffocated in the smoke, or sought a less miserable death by leaping from the tower, amid the jeers of the conquering spectators: but one falling object caused the latter a momentary surprise, for it seemed habited in female vestments: and on the fol- lowing morning, when the bodies of the dead were removed from the fosse, among them was the corpse of a woman."
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