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intrepid swearer) who would venture to insinuate that anything more utterly senseless is, we do not say producible in actual existence, but even conceivable in a dream? Were we to see men, women, or even children (out of the nursery) take a dozen wax puppets, call one Lord this, another Lady that, a third the Hon. Mr. Somebody, and a fourth Col. Somebody else, &c. &c.knock their heads together, and call that quarrelling-set them all jogging, by way of illustrating a dance-and find sundry other ingenious pantomimic representations of the various incidents in real life, which these pages profess to depict-were we to see those unfortunate people whom we have here supposed, not content with indulging in such an amusement in their private chamber (after having carefully drawn down the blinds and bolted the door), actually insist upon exhibiting this intellectual pastime to the public, and even have the impudence to demand a guinea and a half from each of the spectators were we, we repeat, to meet with such a scene as this, in even the pages of Gulliver or Scriblerus, should we believe our own eyes? And yet we would ask, in what respect do the authors and readers of such books as Mrs. Gore's differ from the actors and spectators of such a drama as we have been supposing, except in sinking one degree deeper into absurdity?-for theirs are not even waxen, but mere verbal existences? Why, the very children in the nursery would box the ears of any old idiot of a nursemaid who should attempt to palm off upon them, under the name of play, such barefaced foolery as this. What (let us ask) is the source of interest in a real novel? Why is it that the narrative of Truth itself can never excite in us that interest which appears inseparable from the historian of Fiction? Is it not because his appeal is constantly addressed to that which is common to us all—the human heart; and then, however exalted his subject -however varied his language-we can still hear him every man in his own tongue? Is it not because, while sympathizing with the imaginary joys or sorrows which he presents to our notice, we feel that we are hearing what we have ourselves experienced, or learning of what we are capable; and thus, upon his lips (to borrow the sublime language of Madame de Stäel), 'the record of the past becomes the revelation of the future?' Humani

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nihil a me alienum puto;-but are we to be interested in a mere symbol of rank or picture of wealth-in the fluctuations of a visionary cabinet or the vicissitudes of an imaginary purse? -to be willing to sympathize (at the expense of a guinea and a half) with the puppet-like actions of a fool or a coxcomb, because, forsooth! he is represented as a Lord or a Squire? A Lord and a Squire!' exclaimed the indignant Vicar of Wakefield 'two shillings for a Lord and a Squire !why, I could have promised you a prince and a nabob for half the money!' What would he have said to a guinea and a half? Really, making every allowance for the alteration of the times, we think such a price rather higher than we could have been led to expect from the relative rise in other commodities.

To afford a fair illustration of Mrs. Gore's style of novels, suppose that we --who can boast of having broken our harp during the first moons of our academic freshmanship, and burnt even its very fragments long before we escaped from our teens--suppose, we say, that we--though having now come to years of discretion-should, nevertheless, condescend to genius again for five minutes, and present the reader with a fiction of our own composition

how a Mr. Thos. Williams, foreman in a grocer's shop (well to pass in the world-turning forty shillings a week, and himself turned of forty years old), is adventurous enough to marry a girl of eighteen, by name Sally Smith ;— and how he takes his bride to a teadrinking at the house of his sister (a nymph of the pavé);-and how (as he might have expected, indeed, in such company) she there meets with a sad scamp, who had near been the ruin of her; and how this aforesaid fellow (call him Jackson) gets Mr. Williams turned out of his place, and, not content with that, sets a big bully at him, who blackens his eyes for him ;—and how, upon this disaster, Mr. Williams takes leave of the town ;-and howShall we go on?-No,' (as Sterne says,) we suspect the reader has had enough already. We can forgive him, indeed, but it is upon condition that when he awakens from the nap to which we presume we have consigned him, he will take Mrs. Gore's work, and having, with a merciless pen, demolished castles-laid waste parksand abrogated titles, substitute for them the humbler dwellings, the ple

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beian nomenclatures, and the ignoble avocations of our homely romance-and then honestly ask himself what real difference he can discover

"Twixt tweedledum and tweedledee."

Locke says that it is an affront to wit to try it by the rules of reason. We may certainly, with a clear conscience, concede to Mrs. Gore's works at least a claim to that attribute of wit. In fact, we feel that in subjecting the motions of her characters to the ordinary canons of criticism, we are acting a part as ' unconstitutional' as those who would propose to hold a court-martial upon trainband captains.

"What? hang a man for going mad?
Then farewell, British freedom!"

Nevertheless, as we have been at the trouble of dissecting this work, we shall (to use an anatomical phrase)' demonstrate' a little upon its members. We shall even (though with many apologies to Sir Walter Scott for bringing any of his children into juxta-position with Mrs. Gore's) take the liberty of comparing it with some of the masterpieces of art; on the principle that the deformity of any physical lusus naturæ could never be so fully illustrated as by a comparison with the Belvidere Apollo. We intend, then, to exhibit not merely Mrs. Gore's incapacity to write a novel, but her utter ignorance of the very nature of one. Let us take her heroine--Miss Dudley, we mean-as a specimen. She is beautiful, of course-a novelist can supply that without troubling the fairies. She is, of course, also possessed of every imaginable accomplishment-they do not cost even the six introductory lessons for which any of our newspaper 'professors' will guarantee' them. She is in love, and has a lover, of course, too-(so much of course,' indeed, that Mrs. Gore barely informs us of it incidentally, and in our analysis we had very nearly forgotten to mention it at all). Moreover, she has (as the man says in the play), like tarwater, all the virtues under heavencould anybody take it.' Now, this is precisely Miss Dudley's case. We cannot 'take' her, notwithstanding her innumerable incomparabilities.

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And why not? Mrs. Gore may, perhaps, ask in her ignorance and astonishment. We answer, simply because we are required to 'take' her

upon trust. We have not seen her. In the case of one of Sir Walter Scott's heroines, we feel that we could take the pencil and trace their likeness upon the page we are reading. The beautiful Miss Dudley may be as like one Venus as another, for aught we can tell. Were we, in another world, to meet with any of his characters (from Lucy Ashton down to Jeannie Deans) we should walk up to them as to old acquaintances. Should we know the accomplished Miss Dudley from accomplished Eve' herself? The persons whom Sir Walter introduces to our notice may not beindeed they never are-such absolute paragons as Mrs. Gore's, but-such as they are-are they not our own familiar friends-and, as such, must they not be far more interesting to fections of the whole host of angel and us than all the vague and abstract perarchangel, cherubim and seraphim, all As for Miss Dudley, she may be highborn and rich-so put together? much the better for herself; she may be accomplished-de mieux en mieux, as Lord Forreston would say, but what affair of ours is it? On the other hand, she may be poor (and, for aught she may be crazed with care or crossed we care, she may go to the poorhouse); in hopeless love.'

"Then let the stricken deer go weep;" what can we be expected to care about the matter? She has never made us her confidants. We have never seen the lovers meet-we have never been allowed to listen at the keyhole; even the mysteries of the post-office have been kept sacred from us. We sympathize with Sir Walter Scott's characters, because, long before any demands are made upon us for our sympathy, they have become such intimate friends that we are no longer able to withhold it; but can we be expected to care a straw for the joys or sorrows of personages whose very existence is to us a mere on dit? Now, we are not at present quarrelling with Mrs. Gore for not being equal to the creation of a real character. To expect anything of the sort from her would be to come within one degree of her own stupidity; but she has not even attempted it. It is, perhaps, well that she has not; because, being a mere bore, she could only, like all other bores, have become still more insufferable from her more strenuous efforts to be interesting.—

any other.

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For her to have attempted it, would before. Now-supposing us to be have been insanity ; but for any one able (at the word of command) immeto have not attempted it, and yet to diately to believe a circumstance so have attempted to write a novel, is completely at variance with all our we really know not what word to make previous conceptions of him—when use of, but imagine that ‘fatuity' we meet with this too ardent lover approaches nearer to our meaning than afterwards playing the suitor to a

We have adduced this young lady whom we suspected about instance, therefore, to prove-not(what to turn out to be his own daughter, is sufficiently self-evident) that Mrs. we of course put ourselves in a conGore is unequal to the task of writing catenation accordingly,' and began to a novel, but—that she must be utterly pack up for a journey across the incapable of understanding one. Tweed; having before our eyes the

But this is only one instance, out of fear of a catastrophe whose delicate three volumes' full. We shall select embarrassment would require, and, one more, and we select it

upon perbaps, baffle the most powerful same principle as the last-because, casuistry of even the law of Scotbeing illustrative of an ordinary fault land. Mrs. Gore, however, discreetly of all pseudo novelists, we shall be considering that Edipus himself (even able to make a general application had he had the advantage of being a of it. We have, in the last case, seen Scottish lawyer) might have found the that Mrs. Gore’s heroine (if we are to enigma of his own family relations consider her as such) was a failure, somewhat difficult of solution, settles owing to our knowing nothing about the dilemma at once by informing us her. In the present we shall find a that Florence Dudley was too pure, similar result, from our being told too tov innocent, for Lord Forreston to much. We know not, indeed, whether attempt ber seduction. Yet one short to consider hin the hero or not; but year ago we have seen this considerate we presume that Lord Forreston was gentleman endeavouring to corrupt a intended by Mrs. Gore for one of her bride, (upon whose destruction, indeed, extraordinary characters. Whatever he is represented as, after the lapse of he was intended for, however, we that year, still remorselessly bent); will tell her what he appears to be and as if for fear lest our too merciful a lazy, empty-headed, insignificant judgment should be willing to give coxcomb, who has attained the age of credit to this solitary trait of redeeming forty and the listlessness of fifty, with- nature in so ruthless a profligate-we out having acquired the sense of thirty are given to understand that at the or laid aside the conceit of twenty.— early age of twenty-when his heart But he appears nothing worse. Now, might have been presumed to be not yet in a novel, as in real life, we of course quite withered, and his conscience not judge of the characters by what we already altogether seared-he had signasee them do or hear them say. Retro- lised himself by-not, indeed, the sespective evidence, indeed, (though duction, but the rape, of a victim who always received with caution, if not appears to have been innocent enough with absolute distrust) may be allowed and pure enough, too, for aught that for the purpose of throwing light on

She is, at least, reprewhat is passing upon the stage ; but sented so, at the commencement of the what novelist, who knows what he is affair, and we must certainly infer as about, would ever think of investing much from the voie de fait in which it with an interest independent of that it terminates. And here, by the mouth of the main story ? and who (except of the same witness, the same culpritMrs. Gore, or somebody like her) ever casehardened by a twenty years apdreamt of huddling up into an episode prenticeship to licentiousness—is reof a chapter or so, more incidents than presented as hanging back from the would form plots for a dozen of her pursuit of a fresh victim, for the very novels, apparently for the mere pur- cause which, of all others, would have pose of rendering all that she had told given zest to the chace in the estimaus before unintelligible, and everything tion of any libertine ; but how much that she intended to tell us afterwards more so in the case of such a libertine incredible? Here we have a character, as Lord Forreston. The libertinism, such as we have above described, which even in youth must have bad its suddenly denounced to us as the per. source in a mere brutal instinct, unrepetrator of a rape some eighteen years deemed by one ray of sentiment, or

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we can see.

one spark of feeling, could scarcely be supposed to have been purified by the unscrupulous indulgence of the intervening twenty years; but, from the languid and lazy effeminacy in which Lord Forreston is represented as immersed, would more naturally be imagined to have drivelled down even from a mere intemperance of the blood into that listless wantonness which is at once the curse and the crime of a hopeless depravity of the heart. What are we to think of this evidence? Now, the full absurdity of such novels as Mrs. Gore's does not strike one at first sight. The mind carries away, respecting each of her puppet personages, merely a recollection of certain titles, family names, estates, &c. Anything of character which she may intend to impress upon them is of too vague and shadowy a cast to excite any definite idea of the standard to which we are to refer the various actions ascribed to them; and consequently the incongruities of the incidents, however gross, are less striking than they would have been had she had it in her power to be more graphic. But, we say again, supposing that Mrs. Gore had been able to infuse a sufficient degree of vraisemblance into either of her conflicting portraits of Lord Forreston to enable us to form any notion of him, could we identify him with both? And (to come back to our former position) is not this senseless jumble sufficient to prove, not merely that Mrs. Gore is destitute of the qualifications for a novelist; but that, even had she possessed them, she would not have known how to employ them?

But we have one or two additional remarks to make upon this affair to which we have alluded. In the first place though it may perhaps be considered silly we confess we are squeamish enough to consider the introduction of such a revolting incident into the work of a woman a circumstance not very creditable to her taste, to say the very least of it. But let that pass. We are not allowing her sex as a mitigation, so it must not not be brought up as an aggravation of her faults. But looking at the circumstance simply in the light of an abstract incident in a novel, we must say that we think it altogether unwarrantable, as being utterly out of keep ing with the rest of the picture. The quarrel of the lovers, indeed, itself is perhaps rather a silly sort of an affair; but let that pass too. Though, on the

part of the numerous adherents of the Transcendental philosophy, we feel bound to protest en passant against the inference which Mrs. Gore would seem to inculcate here, that every disciple of Kant must necessarily be a born fool; we cheerfully grant that the philosophical megrims which we fear would be likely to prove its sole product in a brain of such texture as Mr. Edwards', may well be imagined to have impressed any young lady with that notion in his particular case; and on the lover's side again, it must be admitted that no man likes to be laughed at, particularly if he chance to be a fool. But granting all this, we still maintain, that in the catastrophe Mrs. Gore carries matters a little too far. To die an old bachelor is, surely, a hard doom, even for a Kantist; but really, to condemn a young lady to the fate of Lucretia, merely for not being up to the vagaries of our transcendentally crazy swain is, we think, going a little farther than should be permitted to the wildest stretch of even poetical justice.

But our chief reason for alluding to this incident is, that we wish to point it out as an instance of a fault to which scribblers of Mrs. Gore's class are particularly prone-we mean an endeavour to swindle us out of our sympathy by presenting us with an incident intrinsically horrible, instead of earning it honestly by the exertion of their own powers upon such as are natural and of every-day occurrence; which alone form the legitimate ground-work of fiction. These contraband efforts are invariably unsuccessful. In the present case, for instance, we have seen how an occurrence, which in the bare dry statement of a newspaper would be horrible enough, under Mrs. Gore's management (with her ludicrous shifts to save the armorial bearings of the child from blemish amidst events which broke the heart of one parent, and ought to have cost the life of the other) becomes-such is the power of weakness-absolutely ridiculous. But Mrs. Gore's failure does not result merely from her imbecile execution of her scheme; it is inherent in its very nature. And a similar fate must invariably await all who expect their subject to achieve for them that interest which it is their business to earn for it. As well might Atlas have clung to the globe upon his shoulders for support. Nothing is so dangerous

for a scribbler to dabble with, as a dish of hell broth. From the ridiculous to the sublime from the raw head and bloody bones of the nursery, for instance, to the witches' cauldron in Macbeth-there is, perhaps, only one step; but that step is on enchanted ground, where none but the initiated are privileged to pass. It is, if we may so express it, the step from darkness into light; which presents at once to our eyes, those terrors which we could laugh at while addressed merely to our ears; and teaches us to tremble because we believe. Thus, to exemplify our meaning by selecting an extreme case: were such an author as Sir Walter Scott even to represent one of his characters as working a miracle, we might, perhaps, be content to wonder; because, were he to describe it, or (in other words) were we to see it, how could we choose but wonder? But, let the same incident come before us merely upon hearsay; and that hearsay also be such as we have previously begun to consider as rather of a cockand-bull cast; and, truly, we shall wonder only at the impudence of those who would attempt to play off such a barefaced hoax upon us; and tossing their volumes aside with a yawn, roundly giving them to understand while we are stretching ourselves, that we would not believe them, even (to add an Irish intensitive) had we nothing else to do.'

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horrors he expected to freeze the blood
or harrow up the soul, will teach him
in the hour of trial that he has been
tampering with a perilous and mysteri-
ous talisman, which, at the touch of the
wizard himself, indeed, can wake the
very dead, but in the unskilful hands
of his presumptuous satellite, has power
only to paralyze their grasp.

We do not, however, in general, find
that it is the great masters of the art
who are peculiarly prone to deal in
the delineations of exaggerated charac-
Such
ter: and for obvious reasons.
an author (confident in the true al-,
chemy of genius) may select his mate-
rials at random; well knowing that
beneath his touch, though the adamant
will mould like wax, yet even the
potter's clay must turn to gold. Ex-
we have mentioned
travagance, as
above, is the natural resource of innate
feebleness; which finding itself unable
to present us with a vigorous portrait
of human nature, in either its beauty
or its deformity, attempts to supply
the one by a milk-and-water parody
on an angel, and the other by a slip-
They
slop caricature of a fiend.
endeavour to brighten their good cha-
racters to a degree which would dazzle
us into an absolute blindness; and to
darken their bad ones into an utter
blackness, which, as it would render
every feature indistinguishable, must
consequently leave the whole portrait
a mere blank in our imagination. The
study of such novelists as Mrs. Gore
again, discloses a fresh species to our
view; who are not content with collecting
for the same picture those tints whose.
gaudy and marked character, instead
of being (as they suppose) in themselves
sufficient to secure success, would in
themselves be enough to defy even the
hand of a master to blend or break
them up; but (to mend the matter)
they imagine the picture to be painted,
when in fact the colours are but laid
upon the pallet;-and thus present us
with a patchwork jumble, compared to
which the motley of an ordinary fool
would be sobriety itself.

It is not, however, in appeals addressed to our imaginations that the full imprudence of exaggeration is manifested. The imagination is a fluctuating sort of faculty, varying in its excitability according to the variation of persons, periods, and circumstances: but our feelings are unerring, even when our fancy may be hoaxed; and he who would attempt to move the heart, has to deal, not with a blindly obedient slave, prepared to crouch beneath the rod of any one who may be disposed to play the tyrant; but with a captious and refractory vassal which, while it can with difficulty be brought under even the legitimate dominion of the mightiest masters, is prepared not merely to disown, but to resent with proportionate indignation the impotent attempts of any intruding impostor to counterfeit their authority. The very weight of the weapon by which the usurper trusts to enforce his sway, will serve only to expose his own imbecility; and the tale with whose

If there be one thing more ludicrous than another about Mrs. Gore, it is the grave candour with which she magnanimously admits,—not indeed her own failure, but that her plebeian rivals have been unsuccessful in their attempts at this species of novel-manufacture. Will it be believed, however, on our Richardson report alone, that she has the impudence to

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