POETRY: PAGE Cornhill Magazine, 131 Saint Paul's, 145 Spectator, 159 Saint Paul's, 160 Chambers' Journal, 170 Contemporary Review,· 171 180 183 184 185 187 188 Die Presse, Vienna, Tyng-a-ling-ting, 130. My Photograph Book Thirty Years Hence, 190. Miss Carnival, 191. Two Ways, 192. The Organ, 192. HORNE'S INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE, UNABRIDGED. We earnestly ask the attention of the readers of "The Living Age" to a prospectus of the New Edition of this work. If they will take an active interest in getting up the clubs proposed, they will do a good work in promoting the circulation of two good publications, and will greatly oblige the publishers. New Books THE SPIRIT OF SEVENTY-SIX; OR, THE COMING WOMAN. A Prophetic Drama; followed by A Change of Base, a comedy; and Doctor Mondschein; or, The Violent Remedy. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. [This is Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-Six. Some very laughable matters have been extensively copied into the newspapers from this book]. THE MEXICAN; OR, LOVE AND LAND. A Poem founded on the Invasion of Maximilian. By John M. Dagnall. New York: American News Company. BROWNLOWS, by Mrs. Oliphant, has been published at this office, price 37 cents. Sent by mail, prepaid, for that price. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the Living Age will be punctually for. warded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year; nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers. "Oh what's to be done? can't this outrage be stopped? Can't our tottering pulpits, in some way, be propped? Let's run to our Bishop, and tell him the news: His Reverence, doubtless, will shake in his shoes, When he hears that without, nay against, our consent, A son of the Church has declared his intent Come on, let us hurry to settle this thing, Ah me! 'tis a sight at which angels might weep! 'Tis a harvest of tares for our churches to reap! Sweet Charity's presence has fled from the scene, And good men lose temper and revel in spleen; And the Doubters and Scoffers, who relish such suits, Cry "Lo, these are Christians! come, judge of their fruits!" And the canon has burst, and with dissonance loud, Has deafened the ears of the wondering crowd, And the pall of its smoke like a garment doth cling To the walls that still echo with Tyng-a-lingting.. VII. Oh! servants of Him whose sole mission was Love, Do ye still bear as emblems the Lamb and the Dove? When ye read from your desks the sweet records that tell How He preached in the Temple and taught at the well, Do the sapient eyes of your wisdom detect P. R. S. RICHARDSON'S NOVELS. easy From The Cornhill Magazine. | absorbed into the paper; a certain soporific aroma exhales from the endless files of fictitious correspondence. This contrast, however, between popularity and celebrity is not THE literary artifice, so often patronized so rare as to deserve special notice. Richby Lord Macaulay, of describing a charac-ardson is only one of many authors whose ter by a series of paradoxes, is of course, in fame seldom rouses a very lively curiosity. one sense, a mere artifice. It is We should like to see a return of the numenough to make a dark grey black and a ber of persons who have fairly read to the light grey white, and to bring the two into end of the Faery Queen, or of Paradise Lost, unnatural proximity. But it rests also who could pass an examination off-hand upon the principle which is more of a plati- even in books of greater claims to populartude than a paradox, that our chief faults ity-say, in Robinson Crusoe, or Gulliver's often lie close to our chief merits. The Travels, Richardson's slumber may be greatest man is perhaps one who is so equa- deeper than that of most men of equal fame, bly developed that he has the strongest fac- but it is not quite unprecedented. The string ulties in the most perfect equilibrium, and is of paradoxes, which it would be easy to apply apt to be somewhat uninteresting to the rest of to Richardson, would turn upon a different mankind. The man of lower eminence has point; that even a celebrated writer should some one or more faculties developed out of sleep well a century after his death is intelliall proportion to the rest, with the natural gible; but there is something decidedly result of occasionally overbalancing him. paradoxical in the nature of his reputaA first-rate gymnast with enormous muscular tion. Here is a man, we might say, whose power in his arms and chest, and compara- special characteristic it was to be a milktively feeble lower limbs, can sometimes sop- who provoked Fielding to a coarse perform the strangest feats in consequence hearty burst of ridicule who was steeped of his conformation, but owes his awkward- in the incense of useless adulation from ness to the same singularity. He astonishes a throng of middle-aged lady worshipus for the time more than the well-propor- pers who wrote his novels expressly tioned man who can do fewer wonders and to recommend little unimpeachable moral more useful work. In the intellectual maxims, as that evil courses lead to unworld the contrasts in one man are often happy deaths, that ladies ought to observe greater. Extraordinary memories with the laws of propriety, and generally that it weak logical faculties, wonderful imaginative is an excellent thing to be thoroughly resensibility with a complete absence of self-spectable; who lived an obscure life in a control, and other defective conformations petty coterie in fourth-rate London society, of mind, supply the raw materials for a and was in no respect at a point of view luminary of the second order, and imply a more exalted than that of his companions. predisposition to certain faults, which are What greater contrast can be imagined in natural complements to the conspicuous its way than that between Richardson, with merits. his second-rate eighteenth-century priggish Such reflections naturally occur in speak-ness and his twopenny-tract morality, and ing of one of our greatest literary reputa- the modern school of French novels, who tions, whose popularity is almost in an in- are certainly not prigs, and whose morality verse ratio to his celebrity. Every one is by no means that of tracts? We might knows the names of Sir Charles Grandison have expected à priori that they would have and Clarissa Harlowe. They are amongst summarily put him down, by whatever the established types which serve to point a epithet corresponds with them to the slang paragraph; but the volumes in which they term of Philistine which is now so popular are described remain for the most part in with us. Yet Richardson is a name of undisturbed repose, sleeping peacefully power with their best writers; Balzac for amongst Charles Lamb's biblia a-biblia, books example, and George Sand, speak of him which are no books, or, as he explains, with reverence; and a writer who is, perthose books "which no gentleman's library haps, as odd a contrast to Richardson as should be without." They never enjoy the could well be imagined Alfred de Musset honours of cheap reprints; the modern - calls Clarissa, le premier roman du monde. reader shudders at a novel in eight volumes, What is the secret which enables the steady and declines to dig for amusement in so pro- old printer, with his singular limitation to his found a mine; when some bold inquirer own career of time and space, to impose dips into their pages he generally fancies upon the wild Byronic Parisian of the that the sleep of years has been somehow next century? Amongst his contemporaries Diderot, the atheistic author of one of the filthiest novels extant, expresses an almost fanatical admiration of Richardson for his purity and power, and declares characteristically that he will place Richardson's works on the same shelf with those of Moses, Homer, Euripides, and other favourite writers; he even goes so far as to excuse Clarissa's belief in Christianity on the ground of her youthful innocence. To continue in the paradoxical vein, we might ask how the quiet tradesman could create the character which has stood ever since for a type of the fine gentleman of the period; or how from the most prosaic of centuries should spring one of the most poetical of feminine ideals? We can hardly fancy a genuine hero with a pigtail, or a heroine in a hoop and high-heeled shoes, nor believe that persons who wore those articles of costume could possess any very exalted virtues. Perhaps our grandchildren may have the same difficulty about the race which wears crinolines and chimney-pot hats. It is a fact, however, that our grandfathers, in spite of their belief in pigtails and in Pope's poetry, and other matters that have gone out of fashion, had some very excellent qualities, and even some genuine sentiment, in their compositions. Indeed, now that their peculiarities have been finally packed away in various lumber-rooms, and the revolt against the old-fashioned school of thought and manners has become triumphant instead of militant, we are beginning to see the picturesque side of their character. They have gathered something of the halo that comes with the lapse of years; and social habits that looked prosaic enough to contemporaries, and to the generation which had to fight against them, have gained a touch of romance. Richardson's characters wear a costume and speak a language which are indeed queer and oldfashioned, but are now far enough removed from the present to have a certain piquancy; and it is becoming easier to recognize the real genius which created them, as the active aversion to the forms in which it was necessarily clothed tends to disappear. The wigs and the high-heeled shoes are not without a certain pleasing quaintness; and when we have surmounted this cause of disgust, we can see more plainly what was the real power which men of the most opposite schools in art have recognized. That Richardson was, as we have said, something of the milksop is obvious; but it is not so plain that that is a very serious objection to a novelist. Every man should have in him some considerable infusion of feminine though not of effeminate character; especially a novelist should have the delicate perception, the sensibility to emotion, and the interest in small details, which only women exhibit in perfection. Indeed this is so true, that there seems to be at present some probability that the art of novel writing will pass altogether into feminine hands. It may be long before the advocates of woman's rights will conquer other provinces of labour; but they have already monopolized to a great extent the immense novel manufacturing industry of Great Britain. Now Richardson had certain other talents of a very high order to which we shall presently refer; but his most obvious merits and defects resulted from his feminine characteristics. His sympathy with women is as obvious in his literature as in his life. Richardson, as our readers know, was perpetual president of one of those institutions which have of late flourished and spread mightily to a mutual admiration society. Never was there a body in which the chief received a more perpetual tribute of flattery, and repaid it by more elaborate condescension. Colley Cibber occasionally appeared as a courtier, and surpassed the regular female attendants in the vigour of his phrases, though scarcely in fervour. We find him writing "The delicious meal I made off Miss Byron - the heroine of Sir Charles Grandison on Sunday last, has given me an appetite for another slice of her off the spit before she is served on the public table:" and he elegantly proposes "come and piddle off a bit more of her." But he expresses himself more energetically, as reported by a lady correspondent. With a profane oath, he swears that he "would never believe that Providence or eternal wisdom or goodness governed the world, if merit, innocence, and beauty were to be so destroyed"— that is, if Richardson admitted a certain catastrophe to his novel. "These," as the lady reporter mildly adds, "were his strongly emphatic expressions." The ladies, however, do very well in their own way. An unknown lady writes to him under a feigned signature, and exclaims with more ingenious flattery, "I do assure you nothing can induce me to read your history through it is too well executed for such tender and foolish hearts as mine!" However she manages to proceed, and entreats him to give a turn to the story, "which will make his despairing readers half mad with joy." She tells him that "all the good-natured and compassionate and distressed are on their knees at his feet, and hope they will not beg in vain." "Pray, sir," she exclaims, "make him (Lovelace) happy- you can so easily do it -pray reform him will you not save a soul, sir?" And Richardson takes in all this rant with perfect seriousness, replies in a voluminous letter of argument, in which the affectation of sublime wisdom does not conceal a kind of purring complacency, and evidently bolts the flattery whole. His no better than a good-managing housekeeper who knows her place. It is, therefore, remarkable that Richardson's greatest triumph should be in describing a woman, and that most of his feminine characters are more life-like, and more delicately discriminated than his men. Unluckily his conspicuous faults result from the same cause. moral prosings savour of the endless gossip The lady from whom we have quoted be- over a dish of chocolate, in which his herocame a settled correspondent, and, when ines delight; we can imagine the applause more familiar, ventured occasionally up- with which his admiring feminine circle on such a tender and humble expostula- would receive his demonstration of the fact, tion as a country priest might offer to a that adversity is harder to bear than prospope. Nor was Richardson slow at return- perity, or the sentiment that "a man of ing compliments in kind. Writing to Miss principle, whose love is founded in reason, Fielding, a sister of his great rival and con- and whose object is mind rather than pertrast, he assures her that her late brother's son, must make a worthy woman happy." knowledge of the human heart was not These are admirable sentiments; but they comparable to hers. He only saw the outside savour of the serious tea-party. If Tom of the clockwork she its finer springs Jones has about it an occasional suspicion and movements. Truly, in this commerce of beer and pipes at the bar, Sir Charles both parties could boast of their gains. Grandison recalls an indefinite consumption Richardson became a kind of Protestant of tea and small talk. In short, the femiconfessor; he gave ladies solemn advice on nine part of Richardson's character has a little discussions to which they invited him; little too much affinity to Mrs. Gamp - not told them whether they ought to learn Lat-that he would ever be guilty of putting gin in, and argued as to the probability of a re- in his cup, but that he would have the same formed rake proving a good husband; as is capacity for spinning out indefinite twaddle not uncommon in such cases, the teacher of a superior kind. And, of course, he fell seems to catch the tone of his penitents; his into the faults which beset the members of letters to young ladies are exactly like mutual admiration societies in general; but young ladies' letters, and full of the gossip- especially those which consist chiefly of woing morality and sentimental platitudes in men. Men who meet for purposes of mutuwhich women occasionally delight. They al flattery, become unnaturally solemn and are worth a glance because the style is priggish; they never free themselves from identical with that of the novels, and ex- the suspicion that the older members of plains to some extent the nature of his art. their coterie may be laughing at them beThe sympathy with women is equally con-hind their backs. But the flattery of wospicuous in his works. Nothing is more men is so much more delicate, and so much rare than to find a great novelist who can more sincere, that it is far more dangerous. satisfactorily describe the opposite sex. Women's heroes are women in disguise, or mere lay-figures, walking gentlemen who parade tolerably through their parts, but have no real vitality. Miss Brontë, for example, showed extraordinary power in Jane Eyre; but Jane Eyre's lovers, Rockingham and St. John, are painted from the outside; they are, perhaps, what some women think men ought to be, but not what any man of fame at all comparable to Miss Brontë's could ever have imagined. Her most successful men - - such as M. Paul in Villette — are those who have the strongest feminine element in their composition. On the oth er hand, the heroines of male writers are for the most part unnaturally strained or quite colourless; male hands are too heavy for the delicate work required. Milton could draw a majestic Satan, but his Eve is It is a poultice which in time softens the hardest outside. Richardson yielded as entirely as any curate exposed to a shower of slippers. He evidently wrote under the impression that he was not merely an imaginative writer of the highest order, but also a great moralist. "He taught the passions to move," says his admirer, Dr. Johnson, "at the command of virtue." Certainly that was Richardson's own view. He was reforming the world, putting down vice, sending duelling out of fashion and inculcating the lessons of the pulpit in a far more attractive form. A modern novelist is half ashamed of his art; he disclaims earnestly any serious purpose; his highest aim is to amuse his readers, and his greatest boast that he amuses them by honourable, or at least by harmless means. There are, indeed, novelists with a pur |