The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 54, April, 1862

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES

The Sisters, Inisfail, and other Poems. By AUBREY DE VERE. London.

Whatever Mr. De Vere writes is welcomed by a select audience. Not taking rank among the great masters of English poetry, he yet possesses a genuine poetic faculty which distinguishes him from "the small harpers with their glees" who counterfeit the true gift of Nature. In refined and delicate sensibility, in purity of feeling, in elevation of tone, there is no English writer of verse at the present day who surpasses him. The fine instinct of a poet is united in him with the cultivated taste of a scholar. There is nothing forced or spasmodic in his verse; it is the true expression of character disciplined by thought and study, of fancy quickened by ready sympathies, of feeling deepened and calmed by faith. As is the case with most English poets since Wordsworth, he invests the impressions received from the various aspects of Nature with moral associations, and with fine spiritual insight he seeks out the inner meaning of the external life of the earth. No one describes more truthfully than he those transient beauties of Nature which in their briefness and their exquisite variety of change elude the coarse grasp of the common observer, and too frequently pass half unnoticed and unfelt even by those whose temperament is susceptive of their inspiring influences, but whose thoughts are occupied with the cares and business of living. But it is especially as the poet of Ireland, and of the Roman Church, that Mr. De Vere presents himself to us in this last volume; and while, consequently, the subject and treatment of many of the poems contained in it give to them a special rather than a universal interest, the patriotic spirit and the fervor of faith manifest in them appeal powerfully to the sympathies of readers in other countries and of other creeds. "'Inisfail' may be regarded as a sort of National Chronicle, cast in a form partly lyrical, partly narrative…. Its aim is to record the past alone, and that chiefly as its chances might have been sung by those old bards, who, consciously or unconsciously, uttered the voice which comes from a people's heart." In this attempt Mr. De Vere has had an uncommon measure of success. The strings of the Irish harp sound with the cadences of fitting harmonies under his hand, as he sings of the sorrows and the joys of Ireland, of the wild storms and the rare sunshine of her pathetic history,—as he denounces vengeance on her oppressors, or blesses the saints and the heroes who have made the land dear and beautiful to its children. The key-note of the series of poems which form this poetic chronicle is struck in the fine verses with which it begins, entitled "History," and of which our space allows us to quote but the opening stanza:—

  "At my casement I sat by night, while the wind far off in dark valleys  Voluminous gathered and grew, and waxing swelled to a gale;  An hour I heard it, or more, ere yet it sobbed on my lattice:  Far off, 't was a People's moan; hard by, but a widow's wail.  Atoms we are, we men: of the myriad sorrow around us  Our littleness little grasps; and the selfish in that have no part:  Yet time with the measureless chain of a world-wide mourning hath     wound us;  History but counts the drops as they fall from a Nation's heart."

One of the most vigorous poems in the volume is that called "The Bard Ethell," and which represents this bard of the thirteenth century telling in his old age of himself and his country, of his memories, and of the wrongs that he and his land had alike suffered:—

  "I am Ethell, the son of Conn;    Here I live at the foot of the hill;  I am clansman to Brian, and servant to none;    Whom I hated, I hate; whom I loved, love still."

Here is a passage from near the end of this poem:—

  "Ah me, that man who is made of dust    Should have pride toward God! 'T is an angel's sin!  I have often feared lest God, the All-Just,    Should bend from heaven and sweep earth clean,  Should sweep us all into corners and holes,  Like dust of the house-floor, both bodies and    souls;  I have often feared He would send some    wind  In wrath, and the nation wake up stone-blind!  In age or youth we have all wrought ill."

But a large part of the volume before us is made up of poems that do not belong to this Irish series, and the readers of the "Atlantic" will find in it several pieces which they will recognize with pleasure as having first appeared in our own pages, and which, once read, were not to be readily forgotten. Mr. De Vere has expressed in several passages his warm sympathy in our national affairs, and his clear appreciation of the great cause, so little understood abroad, which we of the North are engaged in upholding and maintaining. And although in these days of war there is little reading of poetry, and little chance that this volume will find the welcome it deserves and would receive in quieter times in America, we yet trust that it will meet with worthy readers among those who possess their souls in quietness in the midst of the noise of arms, and to such we heartily commend it.

A Book about Doctors. By J. CORDY JEAFFRESON, Author of "Novels and Novelists," "Crewe Else," etc., etc. New York: Rudd & Carleton. 12mo.

Mr. Jeaffreson is not usually either a brilliant or a sensible man with pen in hand, albeit he dates from "Rolls Chambers, Chancery Lane." He is apt to select slow coaches, whenever he attempts a ride. His "Novels and Novelists" is a sad move in the "deadly lively" direction, and his "Crewe Rise" has not risen to much distinction among the reading crew. In those volumes of departed rubbish he sinks very low, whenever he essays to mount; but his dulness is innoxious, for few there be who can say, "We have read him." His "Book about Doctors" is the best literary venture he has yet made. It is not a dull volume. The anecdotes so industriously collected keep attention alert, and one feels inclined to applaud Mr. Jeaffreson as the leaves of his book are turned.

Everything about Doctors is interesting. Here are a few Bible verses which it will do no harm to quote in connection with Mr. Jeaffreson's volume:—

"Honor a physician with the honor due unto him for the uses which you have made of him: for the Lord hath created him."

"For of the Most High cometh healing, and he shall receive honor of the king."

"The skill of the physician shall lift up his head; and in the sight of great men he shall be in admiration."

"The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth; and he that is wise will not abhor them."

It was no unwise thing in Mr. Jeaffreson to bring so many noble men together, as it were into one family. What "names embalmed" one meets with in the collection! Here are Sydenham, Goldsmith, Smollett, Sir Thomas Browne, and a golden line of other Doctors, nearly all the way down to our own time. (Our well-beloved M.D. [Monthly Diamond] contributor is too young to be included.) Keats is among the worthies, although he got no farther into the mysteries than the apothecary's counter. Meeting with this interesting series of splendid medicine-men leads us to muse a good deal about the Faculty, and to re-read several good anecdotes about the great symptom-watchers of the past and the present day.

When Sir Richard Blackmore asked the great Sydenham, "Prince of English physicians," what he would advise him for medical reading, he is said to have replied, "Read Don Quixote, Sir." Sensible and witty old man!

We are struck with the cheerful character of nearly all the M.D.s mentioned in the volume, and are constantly reminded of the advice we once read of an old Doctor to a young one:—"Moreover, let me tell you, my young doctor friend, that a cheerful face, and step, and neckcloth, and button-hole, and an occasional hearty and kindly joke, a power of executing and setting a-going a good laugh, are stock in our trade not to be despised."

"I may give an instance," says the same good-natured physician, "when a joke was more and better than itself. A comely young wife, the 'cynosure' of her circle, was in bed, apparently dying from swelling and inflammation of the throat, an inaccessible abscess stopping the way; she could swallow nothing; everything had been tried. Her friends were standing round the bed in misery and helplessness. 'Try her wi' a compliment,' said her husband, in a not uncomic despair. She had genuine humor, as well as he; and an physiologists know, there is a sort of mental tickling which is beyond and above control, being under the reflex system, and instinctive as well as sighing. She laughed with her whole body, and burst the abscess, and was well."

Mr. Jeaffreson's book might be better, but it might be worse. We cannot forgive him for his "Novels and Novelists" and his "Crewe Rise," two works which go far to prove their author a person of indefatigable incoherency; but we thank him for the industry which brought together so much that is very readable about Doctors.

John Brent. By THEODORE WINTHROP, Author of "Cecil Dreeme." Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.

It is probable that we have not yet completely appreciated the value of the bright and noble life which a wretched Rebel sharp-shooter extinguished in the disastrous fight of Great Bethel. "John Brent" is a book which gives us important aid in the attempt to form an adequate conception of Winthrop's character. Its vivid pages shine throughout with the author's brave and tender spirit. "Cecil Dreeme" was an embodiment of his thoughts, observations, and imaginations; "John Brent" shows us the inbred poetry and romance of the man in the grander form of action. The scene is placed in the wild Western plains of America, among men entirely free from the restraints of conventional life; and the book has a buoyancy and brisk vitality, a dashing, daring, and jubilant vigor, such as we are not accustomed to in ordinary romances of American life. Sir Philip Sidney is the type of the Anglo-Saxon hero; but we think that Winthrop was fully his match in delicacy and intrepidity, in manly courage, and in sweet, instinctive tenderness. As to style, the American far exceeds the Englishman. A certain conventional artifice and dainty affectation clouded the clear and beautiful nature of Sidney, when he wrote. The elaborate embroidery of thought, the stiff and cumbrous Elizabethan dress of language, with all its ruffles and laces, make the "Arcadia" an imperfect exponent of Sidney's nature. His intense thoughts, delicate emotions, and burning passions are half concealed in the form he adopts for their expression. But Winthrop is as fresh, natural, strong, and direct in his language as in his life. He used words, not for ornament, but for expression. Every phrase is stamped by a die supplied by reflection or feeling, and not a paragraph in "John Brent" differs in spirit from the practical heroism which urged the author to expose himself to certain death at Great Bethel. The condensed, lucid, picturesque, and sharp-cut sentences, flooded with will, show the nature of the man,—a man who announced no sentiments and principles he was not willing to sacrifice himself to disseminate or defend. A living energy of soul glows over the whole book,—swift, fiery, brave, wholesome, sincere, impatient of all physical obstacles to the operation of thought and affection, and eager to make stubborn facts yield to the impatient pressure of spiritual purpose.

We cannot say much in praise of the plot of "John Brent," but it at least enables the author to supply a good framework for his incidents, descriptions, and characters. The plot is based rather on possibilities than probabilities; but the men and women he depicts are thoroughly natural. It would be difficult to point to any other American novel which furnishes incidents that can compare in vigor and vividness with some of the incidents in this romance. The ride to rescue Helen Clitheroe from her kidnappers is a masterpiece, worthy to rank with the finest passages of Cooper or Scott. The fierce, swift black stallion, "Don Fulano," a horse superior to any which Homer has immortalized, is almost the hero of the romance. That Winthrop, with all his sympathy with the "advanced" ideas and sentiments of the reformers and philanthropists of the time, was not a mere prattling and scribbling sentimentalist, is proved by his glorious idealization of this magnificent horse. He raises the beast into a moral and intellectual sympathy with his human rider, and there is a poetic justice in making him die at last in an attempt to further the escape of a fugitive slave.

The characterization of the book is original. Gerrian, Jake Shamberlain, Armstrong, Sizzum, the Mormon preacher, are absolutely new creations. Hugh Clitheroe may suggest Dickens's Skimpole and Hawthorne's Clifford, but the character is developed under entirely new circumstances. As for Wade and Brent, they are persons whom we all recognize as the old heroes of romance, though the conditions under which they act are changed. Helen, the heroine of the story, is a more puzzling character to the critic; but, on the whole, we are bound to say that she is a new development of womanhood. The author exhausts all the resources of his genius in giving a "local habitation and a name" to this fond creation of his imagination, and he has succeeded. Helen Clitheroe promises to be one of those "beings of the mind" which will he permanently remembered.

Heroism, active or passive, is the lesson taught by this romance, and we know that the author, in his life, illustrated both phases of the quality. His novels, which, when he was alive, the booksellers refused to publish, are now passing through their tenth and twelfth editions. Everybody reads "Cecil Dreeme" and "John Brent," and everybody must catch a more or less vivid glimpse of the noble nature of their author. But these books give but an imperfect expression of the soul of Theodore Winthrop. They have great merits, but they are still rather promises than performances. They hint of a genius which was denied full development. The character, however, from which they derive their vitality and their power to please, shines steadily through all the imperfections of plot and construction. The novelist, after all, only suggests the power and beauty of the man; and the man, though dead, will keep the novels alive. Through them we can commune with a rare and noble spirit, called away from earth before all its capacities of invention and action were developed, but still leaving brilliant traces in literature of the powers it was denied the opportunity adequately to unfold.

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FOREIGN LITERATURE

To keep pace with the productions of foreign literature is a task beyond the possibilities of any reader. The bibliographical journals of France, Germany, Italy, and Spain weekly present such copious lists of new works, that a mere mention of only the principal ones would far exceed the limits we have proposed to ourselves. However, from the chaos of contemporary productions it is our intention to sift, as far as lies in our power, such works as may with justice be styled representative of the country in which they are produced. Ranging in this introductory article through the year 1861, we shall limit ourselves to a few of the contributions upon French literary history.

No branch of letters is richer at the present time than that in which the writer, laying aside all thought of direct creativeness, confines himself to the criticism of the works of the past or present, analyzing and studying the influences that have been brought to hear upon the poet, historian, or novelist, anatomizing literature and resolving it into its elements, pointing out the action exercised upon thought and expression by the age, and seeking the effects of these upon society and politics as well as upon the general tastes and moral being of a generation. Methods of writing are now discussed rather than put in practice. We are in a transition age more than politically. Creative genius seems to be resting for more marked and permanent channels to be formed; so that, though every year gives birth to numberless works in every branch of art, original production is rarer than the activity, the restlessness of the time might lead us to expect.

In no country has literary criticism more life than in France. It engages the attention of the best minds. No writer, whatever be his speciality, thinks it derogatory to give long and elaborate notices in the daily press of new books or new editions of old books. Thus, Sainte-Beuve in the "Moniteur," De Sacy, Saint-Marc Girardin, Philarète Chasles, Prévost-Paradol in the "Journal des Débats," not to mention the numerous writers of the "Revue des Deux Mondes," the "Européenne," and the "Nationale," vie with each other in extracting from all that appears what is most acceptable to the general reader.

M. Sainte-Beuve may be taken as a type of the avowedly professional critic. Whatever he may accomplish as the historian of Port-Royal, it is to his weekly articles, informal and disconnected as they are, that he owes his high rank among French authors. These "Causeries du Lundi" have now reached the fourteenth volume.7 In the last we find the same easy admiration, facility of approbation, and suppleness that enable him to praise the "Fanny" of Feydeau, calling it a poem, and on the next page to do justice to the last volume of Thiers's "Consulate and Empire," or to the recent publication of the Correspondence of Buffon. The most important articles in the volume are those on Vauvenargues, on the Abbé de Marolles, and on Bonstetten.

Of quite a different school is M. Armand de Pontmartin, who, under the titles of "Causeries du Samedi," "Causeries Littéraires," etc., has now issued over a dozen volumes touching on all points of contemporary letters, often very severe in their strictures. The last, "Les Semaines Littéraires,"8 contains notices of late works by Cousin, About, Quinet, Laprade, and others, and concludes with an article on Scribe. Pontmarlin represents the Catholic sentiment in literature. He measures everything as it agrees or disagrees with Legitimacy and Ultramontanism. His works are a continual defence of the Bourbons and the Pope. Modern democracy he cannot pardon. Without seeking to deny the excesses and shortcomings of his own party, he finds an explanation for all in the levelling tendencies of the age. He cannot be too severe on the first French Revolution and its results. "In letters," he tells us, "it has led to materialism and anarchy, while the Bourbons personify for France peace, glory," etc.

Pontmartin is an able representative of the side he has taken. He believes in and ably defends those heroes of literature so well characterized as "Prophets of the Past," Chateaubriand, De Bonald, and J. de Maistre. His special objects of antipathy are writers like Michelet and Quinet, pamphleteers like About, and critics like Sainte-Beuve.

The last he cannot pardon for his work on Chateaubriand,9 published in the early part of the year 1861. The time is past for giving a fuller account of this remarkable production of the historian of Port-Royal. Suffice it to say, that, though it deals in very small criticism indeed, though its author seems to have made it his task to sum up all the weaknesses of one the prestige of whose name fills, in France at least, the first half of this century, yet there exists no more valuable contribution to the history of literature under the first Empire. It has been called "a work no one would wish to have written, yet which is read by all with exquisite pleasure." Nothing could be truer.

"Chateaubriand and his Literary Group under the Empire" is a course of twenty-one lectures delivered by Sainte-Beuve at Liège, whither he repaired soon after the Revolution of 1848 broke out in Paris. Fragments of the work appeared in the "Revue des Deux Mondes," among others the paper on Chênedollé, which forms the most interesting portion of the second division. In this are to be found several original letters, now published for the first time, casting much new light on the life of that unfortunate poet.

Of more general interest, however, are the pages on Chateaubriand himself. It was the fate of this writer to be flattered beyond measure in his lifetime, and now come the first judgments of posterity, which deals with him no less harshly than it has already begun to deal with another idol of the French people, Béranger. Sainte-Beuve has constituted himself judge, reversing even his own adulatory articles, as they may be read in the earlier volumes of the "Causeries." It is at best an ungrateful task to dissect a reputation in the way in which we find it done in the present work. It must seem strange to many a reader that the very man who in early life could utter such sweet flattery, who long was the foremost to bear incense, should now consider it his duty "to seek the foot of clay beneath the splendid drapery, and to replace about the statue the aromas of the sanctuary by the perfumes of the boudoir." In spite of this, "Chateaubriand and his Literary Group" must be ranked among the most remarkable of literary biographies. Here the critic gives full scope to his inclination for minute analysis; the history of the author of "René" explains his works, and these in turn are made to tell his life,—that life so full of love of effect, and constant painstaking to seem rather than to be. Even in his religious sentiments the author of the "Genius of Christianity" appears lukewarm, not to say more.

In comprehensive works on literary history France is far from being as rich as Germany. Beyond the native literature little has been accomplished; and even in this, works of importance may be counted on the fingers. The past year saw the conclusion of Nisard's work, the most comprehensive history of French literature. The fourth volume10 is devoted to the eighteenth century, and concludes with a few general chapters on the nineteenth.

The work of M. Gerusez, "History of French Literature from its Origin to the Devolution,"11 although it had the honor of being considered worthy of the prix Gobert by the French Academy, is far from satisfying the requirements of general literary history. It may rather be considered a systematic series of essays, beginning with the "Chansons de Geste," analyzing several poems of the cycle of Charlemagne, and followed by successive independent chapters on the Middle Ages, the revival of letters, and modern times down to the Revolution. It will be remembered that in 1859 M. Gerusez published a "History of Literature during the French Revolution, 1789-1800." This also obtained a prize from the Academy,—much more deservedly, we think, than the last production, when we consider the interest he cast over the literary efforts of a period much more marked by action than by artistic productiveness of any kind. The German writer Schmidt-Weiszenfels in the same year issued a work with the pretentious title, "History of the Revolution-Literature of France."12 This is little more than a declamatory production, wanting in what is most characteristic of the German mind, original research. The "Literary History of the National Convention,"13 by E. Maron, is devoted more to politics than to letters.

To return to the volumes of M. Gerusez. It is rather a sign of poverty in general literary history, that detached sketches, with little connection beyond their chronological order, should have been deemed worthy of the prize and the praises awarded to them. However, though lacking in comprehensive views such as we have a right to expect from an author who attempts to portray the rise, growth, and full expansion of a literature, the work of M. Gerusez may be perused with pleasure and profit by the student. It is clear and satisfactory in the details. Thus, the pages devoted to the writers of the "Encyclopédie," though few, may vie with any that have been written to set in their true light men whose influence was so great on the generation that succeeded them. If impartiality consisted in always steering in the juste-milieu, M. Gerusez would be the most impartial of historians. As it is, we have to thank him for a good book, regretting only that he has gone no farther.

Far otherwise is it with M. Saint-Marc Girardin. The eloquent Sorbonne professor has seen his fame increase with every new volume of his "Course of Dramatic Literature." We have now the fourth volume.14 "A Course of Dramatic Literature";—it is more. It is the history of the expression of Passion among the ancients and the moderns, by no means confined to the drama. The present volume, as well as the third, published several years ago, is devoted to the analysis of Love as expressed in different ages and by different nations, under the two divisions of L'Amour Ingénu and L'Amour Conjugal.