The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 41, March, 1861

Life of Andrew Jackson. By JAMES PARTON, Author of the "Life of Aaron Burr," etc., etc. 3 vols. 8vo. New York: Mason Brothers. 1860.

We criticized Mr. Parton's "Life of Aaron Burr" with considerable severity at the time of its appearance; and we are the more glad to meet with a book of his which we can as sincerely and heartily commend. The same quality of sympathy with his subject, which led him in his former work to palliate the moral obliquity and overlook the baseness of his hero, in consideration of brilliant gifts of intellect and person, gives vigor and spirit to his delineation of a character in most respects so different as that of Jackson. This man, who filled so large a place in our history, and left perhaps a stronger impress of himself on our politics than any other of our public men except Jefferson, was well worthy to be made a subject of careful study and elucidation. Mr. Parton has given us the means of understanding a character hitherto a puzzle, and deserves our hearty thanks for the manner in which he has done it.

We think the book remarkably fair in its tone, though perhaps Mr. Parton is now and then led to exaggerate the positive greatness of Jackson, who, as it appears to us, was rather eminent by comparison and contrast with the men around him. But there were many strong, if not great qualities in his composition, and so much that was picturesque and strange in the incidents of his career and the state of society which formed his character, that we have found this biography one of the most instructive and entertaining we ever read. If Mr. Parton sometimes exaggerates his hero's merits, he is also outspoken in regard to his faults. If here and there a little Carlylish, his style has the merit of great liveliness, and his pictures of frontier-life are full of interest and vivacity.

Mr. Parton begins his book with a new kind of genealogy, and one suited to our Western hemisphere, where men are valued more for what they themselves are than for what their grandfathers were,—for making than for wearing an illustrious name. He shows that Jackson came of a good stock,—pious, tenacious of opinion and purpose, and brave,—the Scotch-Irish. He then tells us how young Jackson imbibed his fierce patriotism, riding as a boy-trooper, and wellnigh dying a prisoner, during the last years of the Revolutionary War. He lets us see his hero cock-fighting, horse-racing, bad-whiskey-drinking, studying law, and fighting by turns, leaving behind him somewhat dubious but on the whole favorable memories, yet somehow getting on, till he is appointed District-Attorney among the wolves, wildcats, and redskins of Tennessee. The story of his emigration thither and his early life there is wonderfully picturesque, and told by Mr. Parton with the spirit which only sympathy can give.

A great part of the material is wholly new, and we are at last enabled to get at the real Jackson, and to gain something like an adequate and consistent conception, of him. We are particularly glad to learn the truth about Mrs. Jackson, after so many years of slander and misunderstanding, and to find something really touching and noble, instead of ludicrous, in the grim General's devotion to his first and only love. We get also for the first time an understandable account of the Battle of New Orleans, made up with praiseworthy impartiality from the accounts of both sides. Nor is it only here that the author gives us new light. He enables us to judge fairly of the sad story of Arbuthnot and Ambrister, and throws a great deal of light on many points of our political history which much needed honest illumination. The book is of especial interest at the present time, as it contains the best narrative we have ever seen of the Nullification troubles of 1832. Mr. Parton not only shows a decided talent for biography, but his work is characterized by a thoroughness of research and honesty of purpose that make it, on the whole, the best life yet written of any of our public men.

Poems. By ROSE TERRY. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1861. pp. 231.

We forget who it was that once charitably christened one of his volumes "Prose by a Poet," in order that the public might be put on their guard as to the difference between it and the others,—inexperienced critics are so apt to make mistakes! The example seems to us worth following, and, were this dangerous frankness made a point of honor in title-pages, we should be able at a glance to distinguish the books that must be bought from those that may be read. We should then see advertised "The Ten-Inch Bore, or Sermons by Rev. Canon So-and-so,"—"Essays to do Good, by a Victim of Original Sin,"—"Poems by a Proser,"—"Political Economy, by a Bankrupt," and the like. We should know, at least, what we had to expect.

We do not mean to apply this to Miss Terry; but her volume reminded us, by the association of opposites, of the title to which we have referred. We had long known her as a writer of picturesque and vigorous prose, as one of the most successful sketchers of New England character, abounding in humor and pathos; but we had never conceived her as a writer of verse. The readers of the "Atlantic" remember too well her "Maya, the Princess," "Metempsychosis," and "The Sphinx's Children," to need reminding that she has qualities of fancy as remarkable as her faculty for observing real life. Miss Terry seems in this volume to have sought refuge from the real in the ideal, from the jar and bustle of the outward world in the silent and shadowy interior of thought and being. Her poems have the fault of nearly all modern poetry, inasmuch as they are over-informed with thought and sadness. By far the greater number of her themes are abstract and melancholy. It appears to us that her mind moves more naturally and finds readier expression in the picturesque than in the metaphysical; and in saying this we mean to say that she is really a poet, and not a rhymer of thoughts. "Midnight" is a poem full of originality and vigor, with that suggestion of deepest meaning which is so much more effective than definite statement. "December XXXI." gives us a new and delightful treatment of a subject which the poets have made us rather shy of by their iteration. We would signalize also, as an especial favorite of ours, "The Two Villages," and still more the very striking poem "At Last." But, after all, we are not sure that the Ballads are not the best pieces in the volume. The "Frontier Ballads," in particular, quiver with strength and spirit, and have the true game-flavor of the border.

Harrington. By the Author of "What Cheer?" Boston: Thayer & Eldridge.

One of the most impossible books that man ever wrote. A book which one could almost prove never could be written, and which, as an illogical conclusion, but a stubborn fact, has been written, nevertheless. "Harrington" is an Abolition novel, the scene of which is laid in Boston, with a few introductory chapters of plantation-slavery in Louisiana. Its principal merit is its burning earnestness of feeling and purpose; and earnestness is sacred from criticism. Whenever the warm, pulse of an author's heart can be felt through the texture of his story, criticism is mere flippancy. But, at the risk of making our author's lip curl with disdain of the sordid insensibility that refuses to join in his enthusiasm throughout, we shall venture to remind him that enthusiasm is no proof of truth, whether in argument or conclusion.

The introductory chapters, containing the flight of the slave Antony through the Louisiana swamp, are almost unequalled for unfaltering power, for gorgeous wealth of color. Many of the glowing sentences belong rather to passionate poetry than to tamer prose. The agonized resolution that turns the panting fugitive's blood and body to fire,—the fear, so vividly portrayed that the reader's nerves thrill with the shock that brings the hunted negro's heart almost to his mouth with one wild throb,—the matchless picture of the forest and marsh, lengthening and widening with dizzy swell to the weary eye and failing brain,—all are the work of a master of language.

When the scene shifts to Boston, the language, which was in perfect keeping with the tropical madness of Antony's flight and the tropical splendor of the Southern forest, is extravagant to actual absurdity, when used with reference to ordinary scenes and ordinary events. All the force of contrast is lost; and contrast is the great secret of effect. The lavish richness of our author's words is as little suited to the things they describe as a mantle of gold brocade would be to the shoulders of a beggar. Even the loveliest of young women is more likely to enter a room by the ordinary mysterious mode of locomotion than to "flash" into it like a salamander. That it was possible for Muriel Eastman, in gratifying her "vaulting ambition" by a very creditable spring over the parallel bars, to "toss the air into perfume," we are not prepared to deny, having no very clear notion of the meaning of those remarkable words; but when, we are told that Mrs. Eastman was "ineffably surprised, yet more ineffably amused," we must be allowed to enter an energetic protest. Harrington himself is perhaps a trifle too "regnant" to be altogether satisfactory; and there are many similar extravagances and inaccuracies.

The social intercourse of the ladies and gentlemen in this book is particularly bad. It seems as if the author were ignorant of the usages of good society, and, impatient of the vulgar ceremony of inferior people, had seen no way to assert the superiority of his two fair ladies and their unimaginable lovers, except making them dispense with all such observances whatever. His uncertainty how people in their position really do act has hampered his powers; and he is not that rarity, an original writer, but that very common person, one who tries to be original. Real ladies and gentlemen are not reduced to the alternative of either being embarrassed by the ordinary social rules or disregarding them altogether; they take advantage of them. It is a false originality that is singular about ordinary forms; it is only the tyro in chess who is "original" in his first move; Paul Morphy, the most inventive of players, always begins with the customary advance of the king's pawn.

There is the usual partiality—one-sidedness—common to the writings and orations of our author's political school. It may well be doubted whether in reality all the virtues have been monopolized by the Antislavery men, all the vices by their opponents. Our author only hurts his own cause, when he invests with a halo of light every brawler who echoes the words of the really eminent leaders. Because one Abolitionist, who has sacrificed power and position to his creed, is entitled to praise, is another, who perhaps, by advocating the same doctrines, gains a higher position, a wider influence, perhaps an easier support, than he could in any other way, to share the credit of having made a sacrifice? One would not disparage martyrs; but Saint Lawrence on a cold gridiron, and the pilgrim who boiled his peas, are entitled to more credit for their shrewdness than their suffering. Our author, however, makes no distinction; and a natural result will be that many of his readers, knowing that in one case his praises are undeserved, will be slow to believe them just in any case. And not only are all of this particular school disinterested, but they are all among the master-intellects of the age, apparently by definition. Mr. Harrington himself is the commanding intellect of the story, perhaps because of his belief in the greatest number of heresies,—being somewhat peculiar in his religious views, believing in woman's rights, considering the marriage ceremony a silly concession to popular prejudice, giving credence to omens, active as an Abolitionist, and—to crown all—holding that Lord Bacon wrote Shakspeare's Plays! We sympathize entirely with the author's indignant protest against thinking a theory necessarily inaccurate because it contravenes the opinion of the majority. Certainly, a new thing is not necessarily wrong; but neither is a new thing necessarily right; and we are heartless enough to pronounce the "Baconian theory" rather weak than otherwise for a hero.

We cannot close our notice of this book without commending the old French fencing-master as particularly good. He talks very simply and well on matters that he understands, and is silent on those that he does not understand,—affording in both respects an excellent example to the more important characters.

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1

See Atlantic Monthly for February.

2

This is more than half of the value of all the exports and imports of the Union in the year 1860, King Cotton included.

3

In Balthasar, Déf. de Guill. Tell (Lucerne, 1760); Gottl. Eman. von Haller, Vorlesung über Wilh. Tell, etc. (Bern, 1772); Hisely, Guill. Tell et la Révolution de 1307 (Delft, 1826); Ideler, Die Sage vom Schüsse des Tell (Berlin, 1836); Häusser, Die Sage vom Tell (Heidelberg, 1840); Schoenhuth, Wilh. Tell, Geschichte aus der Vorzeit (Reutlingen, 1836); Henning, Wilh. Tell (Nürnberg, 1836); and Histoire de Guill. Tell, Libérateur de la Suisse (Paris, 1843).

4

Rev. C. T. Brooks's translation, p. 53.