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THE LITERATI OF NEW YORK CITY. —
NO. IV.
SOME HONEST OPINIONS AT RANDOM RESPECTING THEIR
AUTORIAL
MERITS,
WITH OCCASIONAL WORDS OF PERSONALITY.
BY EDGAR A. POE.
[column 1:]
SARAH
MARGARET FULLER.
 Miss Fuller was at one time editor,
or one of the editors of "The Dial," to which she contributed many of
the
most forcible, and certainly some of the most peculiar papers. She
is known, too, by "Summer on the Lakes," a remarkable assemblage of
sketches,
issued in 1844 by Little & Brown, of Boston. More lately she
has published "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," a work which has
occasioned
much discussion, having had the good fortune to be warmly abused and
chivalrously
defended. At present, she is assistant editor of "The New York
Tribune,"
or rather a salaried contributor to that journal, for which she has
furnished
a great variety of matter, chiefly critical notices of new books, etc.
etc., her articles being designated by an asterisk. Two of the
best
of them were a review of Professor Longfellow's late magnificent
edition
of his own works, (with a portrait,) and an appeal to the public in
behalf
of her friend Harro Harring. The review did her infinite credit;
it was frank, candid, independent — in even ludicrous contrast to the
usual
mere glorifications of the day, giving honor only where honor
was
due, yet evincing the most thorough capacity to appreciate and the most
sincere intention to place in the fairest light the real and
idiosyncratic
merits of the poet.
In my opinion it is one of the
very few
reviews
of Longfellow's poems, ever published in America, of which the critics
have not had abundant reason to be ashamed. Mr. Longfellow is
entitled
to a certain and very distinguished rank among the poets of his
country,
but that country is disgraced by the evident toadyism which would award
to his social position and influence, to his fine paper and large type,
to his morocco binding and gilt edges, to his flattering portrait of
himself,
and to the illustrations of his poems by Huntingdon, that amount of
indiscriminate
approbation which neither could nor would have been given to the poems
themselves.
The defence of Harro Harring,
or rather the
Philippic against those who were doing him wrong, was one of the most
eloquent
and well-put articles I have ever yet seen in a newspaper.
"Woman in the Nineteenth
Century" is a book
which few women in the country could have written, and no woman in the
country would have published, with the exception of Miss Fuller.
In [column 2:] the way of independence, of
unmitigated
radicalism, it is one of the "Curiosities of American Literature," and
Doctor Griswold should include it in his book. I need scarcely say that
the essay is nervous, forcible, thoughtful, suggestive, brilliant, and
to a certain extent scholar-like — for all that Miss Fuller produces is
entitled to these epithets — but I must say that the conclusions
reached
are only in part my own. Not that they are too bold, by any means
— too novel, too startling, or too dangerous in their consequences, but
that in their attainment too many premises have been distorted and too
many analogical inferences left altogether out of sight. I mean
to
say that the intention of the Deity as regards sexual differences — an
intention which can be distinctly comprehended only by throwing the
exterior
(more sensitive) portions of the mental retina casually over
the
wide field of universal analogy — I mean to say that this intention
has not been sufficiently considered. Miss Fuller
has erred,
too, through her own excessive objectiveness. She judges woman by
the heart and intellect of Miss Fuller, but there
are not more
than
one or two dozen Miss Fullers on the whole face of the earth. Holding
these opinions in regard to "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," I still
feel myself called upon to disavow the silly, condemnatory criticism of
the work which appeared in one of the earlier numbers of "The Broadway
Journal." That article was not written by myself, and was
written by my associate Mr. Briggs.
The most favorable estimate of
Miss
Fuller's
genius (for high genius she unquestionably possesses) is to be
obtained,
perhaps, from her contributions to "The Dial," and from her "Summer on
the Lakes." Many of the descriptions in this volume are
unrivalled
for graphicality, (why is there not such a word?) for the
force
with which they convey the true by the novel or unexpected, by the
introduction
of touches which other artists would be sure to omit as irrelevant to
the
subject. This faculty, too, springs from her subjectiveness,
which
leads her to paint a scene less by its features than by its effects.
Here, for example, is a portion
of her
account
of Niagara: —
"Daily these
proportions
widened
and towered more and more upon my sight, and I got at last a proper
foreground
for these sublime distances. Before coming away, I think I really
saw the full wonder of the scene. After [column 2:]
awhile it so drew me into itself as to inspire an undefined dread,
such
as I never knew before, such as may be felt when death is about to
usher
us into a new existence. The perpetual trampling of the
waters
seized my senses. I felt that no other sound, however near, could
be
heard, and would start and look behind me for a foe. I
realized
the identity of that mood of nature in which these waters were poured
down
with such absorbing force, with that in which the Indian was shaped on
the same soil. For continually upon my mind came, unsought and
unwelcome, images, such as had never haunted it before, of naked
savages
stealing
behind me with uplifted tomahawks. Again and again this
illusion
recurred, and even after I had thought it over and tried to shake
it
off, I could not help starting and looking behind me. What
I liked best was to sit on Table Rock close to the great fall; there
all power of observing details, all separate consciousness was quite
lost."
The truthfulness of the
passages italicized
will be felt by all; the feelings described are, perhaps, experienced
by
every (imaginative) person who visits the fall; but most persons,
through
predominant subjectiveness, would scarcely be conscious of the
feelings,
or, at best, would never think of employing them in an attempt to
convey
to others an impression of the scene. Hence so many desperate
failures
to convey it on the part of ordinary tourists. Mr. William W.
Lord,
to be sure, in his poem "Niagara," is sufficiently objective; he
describes
not the fall, but very properly the effect of the fall upon him.
He says that it made him think of his own greatness, of his own
superiority, and so forth, and so forth; and it is only when we come to
think that the thought of Mr. Lord's greatness is quite idiosyncratic,
confined exclusively to Mr. Lord, that we are in condition to
understand
how, in despite of his objectiveness, he has failed to convey an idea
of
anything beyond one Mr. William W. Lord.
From the essay entitled "Philip
Van
Artevelde,"
I copy a paragraph which will serve at once to exemplify Miss Fuller's
more earnest (declamatory) style, and to show the tenor of her
prospective
speculations: —
"At Chicago I
read again
'Philip
Van Artevelde,' and certain passages in it will always be in my mind
associated
with the deep sound of the lake, as heard in the night. I used to
read a short time at night, and then open the blind to look out.
The moon would be full upon the lake, and the calm breath, pure light,
and the deep voice, harmonized well with the thought of the Flemish
hero.
When will this country have such a man ? It is what she
needs
— no thin Idealist, no coarse Realist, but a man whose eye reads the
heavens
while his feet step firmly on the ground and his hands are strong and
dextrous
in the use of human instruments. A man, religious, virtuous and —
sagacious;
a man of universal sympathies, but self-possessed; a man who knows the
region of emotion, though he is not its slave; a man to whom this world
is no mere spectacle or fleeting shadow, but a great, solemn game, to
be
played with good heed, for its stakes are of eternal value, yet who, if
his own play be true, heeds not what he loses by the falsehood of
others.
A man who lives from the past, yet knows that its honey can but
moderately
avail him; whose comprehensive eye scans the present, neither
infatuated
by its golden lures nor chilled by its many ventures; who possesses
prescience,
as the [column 2:] wise man must, but not so far
as
to be driven mad to-day by the gift which discerns to-morrow. When
there
is such a man for America, the thought which urges her on will be
expressed."
From what I have quoted a general conception
of the prose style of the authoress may be gathered. Her manner,
however, is infinitely varied. It is always forcible — but I am
not
sure that it is always anything else, unless I say picturesque. It
rather indicates than evinces scholarship. Perhaps only the
scholastic,
or, more properly, those accustomed to look narrowly at the structure
of
phrases, would be willing to acquit her of ignorance of grammar — would
be willing to attribute her slovenliness to disregard of the shell in
anxiety
for the kernel; or to waywardness, or to affectation, or to blind
reverence
for Carlyle — would be able to detect, in her strange and continual
inaccuracies,
a capacity for the accurate.
"I cannot sympathize
with such an
apprehension:
the spectacle is capable to swallow up all such
objects."
"It is fearful, too,
to know, as
you
look, that whatever has been swallowed by the cataract, is like to
rise suddenly to light."
"I took our mutual friends
to
see her."
"It was always
obvious that they
had
nothing in common between them."
"The Indian cannot be
looked at
truly except by a poetic eye."
"McKenney's Tour to
the Lakes
gives
some facts not to be met with elsewhere."
"There is that
mixture of culture
and
rudeness in the aspect of things as gives a feeling of
freedom,"
etc. etc. etc.
These are merely a few, a very few
instances,
taken
at random from among a multitude of wilful murders committed
by
Miss Fuller on the American of President Polk. She uses, too, the
word "ignore," a vulgarity adopted only of late days (and to no good
purpose,
since there is no necessity for it) from the barbarisms of the law, and
makes no scruple of giving the Yankee interpretation to the verbs
"witness"
and "realize," to say nothing of "use," as in the sentence, "I used to
read a short time at night." It will not do to say, in defence of such
words, that in such senses they may be found in certain dictionaries —
in that of Bolles', for instance; — some kind of "authority"
may
be found for any kind of vulgarity under the sun.
In spite of these things, however,
and of her
frequent
unjustifiable Carlyleisms, (such as that of writing sentences which are
no sentences, since, to be parsed, reference must be had to sentences
preceding,)
the style of Miss Fuller is one of the very best with which I am
acquainted.
In general effect, I know no style which surpasses it. It is
singularly
piquant, vivid, terse, bold, luminous — leaving details out of sight,
it
is everything that a style need be.
I believe that Miss Fuller has
written much
poetry,
although she has published little. That little is tainted with
the
affectation of the transcendentalists, [page 74:]
(I used this term, of course, in the sense which the public of late
days
seem resolved to give it,) but is brimful of the poetic sentiment. Here,
for example, is something in Coleridge's manner, of which the author of
"Genevieve" might have had no reason to be ashamed: —
"A maiden sat beneath a
tree;
Tear-bedewed her pale cheeks
be,
And she sigheth heavily.
"From forth the wood into the light
A hunter strides with carol light,
And a glance so bold and
bright.
"He careless stopped and eyed the
maid:
'Why weepest thou ?' he gently
said;
'I love thee well, be not
afraid.'
"He takes her hand and leads her
on —
She should have waited there
alone,
For he was not her chosen
one.
"He leans her head upon
his breast
—
She knew 'twas not her home of
rest,
But, ah, she had been sore
distrest.
"The sacred stars looked sadly
down;
The parting moon appeared to
frown,
To see thus dimmed the diamond
crown.
"Then from the thicket starts a
deer —
The huntsman, seizing on his
spear
Cries, 'Maiden, wait thou for
me
here.'
"She sees him vanish into night
—
She starts from sleep in deep
affright,
For it was not her own true
knight.
"Though but in dream Gunhilda
failed —
Though but a fancied ill
assailed —
Though she but fancied fault
bewailed
—
"Yet thought of day makes dream of
night;
She is not worthy of the
knight;
The inmost altar burns not
bright.
"If loneliness thou canst not bear
—
Cannot the dragon's venom dare
—
Of the pure meed thou shoulds't
despair.
"Now sadder that lone maiden
sighs;
Far bitterer tears profane her
eyes;
Crushed in the dust her heart's
flower
lies." |
To show the evident carelessness with which this
poem was constructed, I have italicized an identical rhyme (of about
the
same force in versification as an identical proposition in logic) and
two
grammatical improprieties. To lean is a neuter verb, and
"seizing on" is not properly to be called a pleonasm, merely
because it
is
— nothing at all. The concluding line is difficult of
pronunciation
through excess of consonants. I should have preferred, indeed,
the
ante-penultimate tristich as the finale of the poem.
The supposition that the book of an
author is a
thing
apart from the author's self, is, I think, ill-founded. The soul
is a cypher, in the sense of a cryptograph; and the [column
2:]
shorter a cryptograph is, the more difficulty there is in its
comprehension
— at a certain point of brevity it would bid defiance to an army of
Champollions. And thus he who has written very little, may in that
little either
conceal
his spirit or convey quite an erroneous idea of it — of his
acquirements,
talents, temper, manner, tenor and depth (or shallowness) of thought —
in a word, of his character, of himself. But this is impossible
with
him who has written much. Of such a person we get, from his
books,
not merely a just, but the most just representation. Bulwer, the
individual,
personal man, in a green velvet waistcoat and amber gloves, is not by
any
means the veritable Sir Edward Lytton, who is discoverable only in
"Ernest
Maltravers," where his soul is deliberately and nakedly set
forth. And who would ever know Dickens by looking at him or talking
with him,
or doing anything with him except reading his "Curiosity Shop?" What
poet,
in especial, but must feel at least the better portion of himself more
fairly represented in even his commonest sonnet, (earnestly written)
than
in his most elaborate or most intimate personalities ?
I put all this as a general
proposition, to which
Miss Fuller affords a marked exception — to this extent, that her
personal
character and her printed book are merely one and the same thing. We
get access to her soul as directly from the one as from the
other
— no more readily from this than from that — easily from
either. Her acts are bookish, and her books are less thoughts than
acts. Her literary and her conversational manner are identical. Here is
a passage from her "Summer on the Lakes:" —
"The rapids enchanted
me far
beyond
what I expected; they are so swift that they cease to seem so —
you can think only of their beauty. The fountain beyond the
Moss
islands I discovered for myself, and thought it for some time an accidental
beauty which it would not do to leave, lest I
might never
see
it again. After I found it permanent, I returned many
times
to watch the play of its crest. In the little waterfall beyond,
Nature
seems, as she often does, to have made a study for some larger
design.
She delights in this — a sketch within a sketch — a dream within a
dream. Wherever we see it, the lines of the great buttress
in
the fragment
of stone, the hues of the waterfall, copied in the flowers that star
its bordering mosses, we are delighted; for all the lineaments
become fluent, and we mould the scene in congenial thought
with its genius."
Now all this is precisely as Miss
Fuller would speak it. She is perpetually saying just
such things in
just such
words. To get the conversational woman in the mind's eye, all
that is
needed
is to imagine her reciting the paragraph just quoted: but first let us
have the personal woman. She is of the medium height; nothing
remarkable
about the figure; a profusion of lustrous light hair; eyes a bluish
gray,
full of fire; capacious forehead; the mouth when in repose indicates
profound
sensibility, capacity for affection, for love — when moved by a slight
smile, it becomes even beautiful in the intensity of this expression;
but
the upper lip, as if impelled by the action of involuntary muscles, [page
75:] habitually uplifts itself, conveying the impression of
a sneer. Imagine, now, a person of this description looking you
at
one moment earnestly in the face, at the next seeming to look only
within
her own spirit or at the wall; moving nervously every now and then in
her
chair; speaking in a high key, but musically, deliberately, (not
hurriedly
or loudly,) with a delicious distinctness of enunciation — speaking, I
say, the paragraph in question, and emphasizing the words which I have
italicized, not by impulsion of the breath, (as is usual,) but by
drawing
them out as long as possible, nearly closing her eyes the while —
imagine
all this, and we have both the woman and the authoress before us.
——
JAMES LAWSON.
Mr. Lawson has himself made
little effort
in the field of literary labor, but is distinguished for his zeal and
liberality
in the good cause. He is by birth a Scotchman, but few men have more
ardently
at heart the welfare of American letters.
His works, so far as published in
volume form,
are
few. I know only of "Giordano, a tragedy," and two volumes
entitled
"Tales and Sketches by a Cosmopolite." The former was performed some
years
ago, (at the Park, I believe,) and with no great success. The
latter
were more popular. One of them, "The Dapper Gentleman's Story,"
is
a very clever imitation of the manner of Irving, and has "gone the
rounds
of the press."
Mr. Lawson is of social habits and
warm
sympathies. He is enthusiastic, especially in matters of art or taste;
converses
fluently,
tells a capital story, and is generally respected and beloved.
——
CAROLINE
M.
KIRKLAND.
Mrs. Kirkland's "New Home,"
published
under
the nom de plume of "Mary Clavers," wrought an undoubted
sensation.
The cause lay not so much in picturesque description, in racy humor, or
in animated individual portraiture, as in truth and
novelty. The west at the time was a field comparatively untrodden by
the
sketcher
or the novelist. In certain works, to be sure, we had obtained
brief
glimpses of character strange to us sojourners in the civilized east,
but
to Mrs. Kirkland alone we were indebted for our acquaintance with the home
and home-life of the backwoodsman. With a
fidelity and vigor
that prove her pictures to be taken from the very life, she has
represented
"scenes " that could have occurred only as and where she
has described them. She has placed before us the veritable
settlers
of the forest, with all their peculiarities, national and individual;
their
free and fearless spirit; their homely utilitarian views; their shrewd
out-looking for self-interest; [column 2:] their
thrifty
care and inventions multiform; their coarseness of manner, united with
real delicacy and substantial kindness when their sympathies are called
into action — in a word, with all the characteristics of the Yankee, in
a region where the salient points of character are unsmoothed by
contact
with society. So life-like were her representations that they have been
appropriated as individual portraits by many who have been disposed to
plead, trumpet-tongued, against what they supposed to be "the deep
damnation
of their taking-off."
"Forest Life" succeeded "A New Home,"
and was
read
with equal interest. It gives us, perhaps, more of the philosophy of
western
life, but has the same freshness, freedom, piquancy. Of course, a
truthful picture of pioneer habits could never be given in any grave
history
or essay so well as in the form of narration, where each character is
permitted
to develop itself; narration, therefore, was very properly adopted by
Mrs.
Kirkland in both the books just mentioned, and even more entirely in
her
later volume, "Western Clearings." This is the title of a collection of
tales, illustrative, in general, of Western manners, customs,
ideas. "The Land Fever" is a story of the wild days when the madness of
speculation
in land was at its height. It is a richly characteristic sketch, as is
also "The Ball at Thram's Huddle." Only those who have had the fortune
to visit or live in the "back settlements" can enjoy such pictures to
the
full. "Chances and Changes" and "Love vs. Aristocracy"
are
more regularly constructed tales, with the "universal passion"
as
the moving power, but colored with the glowing hues of the west. "The
Bee
Tree" exhibits a striking but too numerous class among the settlers,
and
explains, also, the depth of the bitterness that grows out of an
unprosperous
condition in that "Paradise of the Poor." "Ambuscades" and
"Half-Lengths
from Life" I remember two piquant sketches to which an annual, a year
or
two ago, was indebted for a most unusual sale among the conscious and
pen-dreading
denizens of the west. "Half-Lengths " turns on the trying subject
of caste. "The Schoolmaster's Progress" is full of truth
and
humor. The western pedagogue, the stiff, solitary nondescript
figure
in the drama of a new settlement, occupying a middle position between
"our
folks" and "company," and "boarding round," is irresistibly amusing,
and
cannot fail to be recognised as the representative of a class. The
occupation, indeed, always seems to mould those engaged in it — they
all
soon, like Master Horner, learn to "know well what belongs to the
pedagogical
character, and that facial solemnity stands high on the list of
indispensable
qualifications." The spelling-school, also, is a "new country" feature
which we owe Mrs. Kirkland many thanks for recording. The
incidents
of "An Embroidered Fact" are singular and picturesque, but not
particularly
illustrative of the "Clearings." The same may be said of "Bitter [page
76:] Fruits from Chance-Sown Seeds;" but this abounds in
capital
touches of character: all the horrors of the tale are brought about
through
suspicion of pride, an accusation as destructive at the west
as
that of witchcraft in olden times, or the cry of mad dog in modern.
In the way of absolute books, Mrs.
Kirkland,
I believe, has achieved nothing beyond the three volumes specified,
(with
another lately issued by Wiley and Putnam,) but she is a very constant
contributor to the magazines. Unquestionably, she is one of our best
writers,
has a province of her own, and in that province has few equals. Her
most noticeable trait is a certain freshness of style,
seemingly
drawn, as her subjects in general, from the west. In the second
place
is to be observed a species of wit, approximating humor, and so
interspersed with pure fun, that "wit," after all, is nothing
like
a definition of it. To give an example — "Old Thoughts on the New
Year" commences with a quotation from Tasso's "Aminta"—
"Il mondo invecchia
E invecchiando intristisce;" |
and the following is given as a "free translation" —
"The world is growing older
And wiser
day by
day;
Everybody knows beforehand
What you're
going to
say.
We used to laugh and frolic
—
Now we must
behave:
Poor old Fun is dead and buried
—
Pride dug
his grave." |
This, if I am not mistaken, is the only specimen of poetry as
yet given by Mrs. Kirkland to the world. She has afforded us no
means
of judging in respect to her inventive powers, although fancy, and even
imagination, are apparent in everything she does. Her perceptive
faculties enable her to describe with great
verisimilitude. Her mere style is admirable, lucid, terse, full of
variety, faultlessly
pure, and yet bold — so bold as to appear heedless of the ordinary decora
of composition. In even her most reckless
sentences, however,
he betrays the woman of refinement, of accomplishment, of unusually
thorough
education. There are a great many points in which her general
manner
resembles that of Willis, whom she evidently admires. Indeed, it
would not be difficult to pick out from her works an occasional
Willisism,
not less palpable than happy. For example —
"Peaches were like
little
green
velvet buttons when George was first mistaken for Doctor Beaseley,
and before they were ripe he," etc.
And again —
"Mr. Hammond is
fortunately
settled
in our neighborhood, for the present at least; and he has the neatest
little
cottage in the world, standing, too, under a very tall oak, which bends
kindly over it, looking like the Princess Glumdalclitch inclining her
ear
to the box which contained her pet Gulliver." [column 2:]
Mrs. Kirkland's personal manner is an
echo of her
literary one. She is frank, cordial, yet sufficiently dignified —
even bold, yet especially ladylike; converses with remarkable accuracy
as well as fluency; is brilliantly witty, and now and then not a little
sarcastic, but a general amiability prevails.
She is rather above the medium
height; eyes and
hair
dark; features somewhat small, with no marked characteristics, but the
whole countenance beams with benevolence and intellect.
——
PROSPER
M. WETMORE.
General Wetmore occupied some
years ago
quite
a conspicuous position among the littérateurs of New
York
city. His name was seen very frequently in "The Mirror" and in
other
similar journals, in connection with brief poems and occasional prose
compositions. His only publication in volume form, I believe, is "The
Battle of
Lexington
and other Poems," a collection of considerable merit, and one which met
a very cordial reception from the press.
Much of this cordiality,
however, is
attributable
to the personal popularity of the man, to his facility in making
acquaintances
and his tact in converting them into unwavering friends.
General Wetmore has an exhaustless
fund of vitality. His energy, activity and
indefatigability are
proverbial, not less
than his peculiar sociability. These qualities give him unusual
influence
among his fellow-citizens, and have constituted him (as precisely the
same
traits have constituted his friend General Morris) one of a standing
committee
for the regulation of a certain class of city affairs — such, for
instance,
as the getting up a complimentary benefit, or a public demonstration of
respect for some deceased worthy, or a ball and dinner to Mr. Irving or
Mr. Dickens.
Mr. Wetmore is not only a general,
but Naval
Officer
of the Port of New York, Member of the Board of Trade, one of the
Council
of the Art Union, one of the Corresponding Committee of the Historical
Society, and of more other committees than I can just now
remember. His manners are recherchés, courteous — a
little in the
old
school way. He is sensitive, punctilious; speaks well, roundly,
fluently,
plausibly, and is skilled in pouring oil upon the waters of stormy
debate.
He is, perhaps, fifty years of age,
but has a
youthful
look; is about five feet eight in height, slender, neat, with an air of
military compactness; looks especially well on horseback.
——
EMMA
C. EMBURY.
Mrs. Embury is one of the most
noted, and
certainly one of the most meritorious of our female [page 77:] littérateurs.
She has been many years
before the
public
— her earliest compositions, I believe, having been contributed to the
"New York Mirror" under the nom de plume "Ianthe." They
attracted
very general attention at the time of their appearance and materially
aided
the paper. They were subsequently, with some other pieces,
published
in volume form, with the title "Guido and other Poems." The book has
been
long out of print. Of late days its author has written but little
poetry — that little, however, has at least indicated a poetic capacity
of no common order.
Yet as a poetess she is comparatively
unknown,
her
reputation in this regard having been quite overshadowed by that which
she has acquired as a writer of tales. In this latter capacity
she
has, upon the whole, no equal among her sex in America — certainly no
superior. She is not so vigorous as Mrs. Stephens, nor so vivacious as
Miss
Chubbuck,
nor so caustic as Miss Leslie, nor so dignified as Miss Sedgwick, nor
so
graceful, fanciful and spirituelle as Mrs. Osgood, but is deficient
in none of the qualities for which these ladies are
noted, and in
certain
particulars surpasses them all. Her subjects are fresh, if
not always vividly original, and she manages them with more skill than
is usually exhibited by our magazinists. She has also much
imagination
and sensibility, while her style is pure, earnest, and devoid of
verbiage
and exaggeration. I make a point of reading all tales to
which
I see the name of Mrs. Embury appended. The story by which she
has
attained most reputation is "Constance Latimer, the Blind Girl."
Mrs. E. is a daughter of Doctor
Manly, an
eminent
physician of New York city. At an early age she married a
gentleman
of some wealth and of education, as well as of tastes akin to her
own.
She is noted for her domestic virtues no less than for literary talents
and acquirements.
She is about the medium height;
complexion, eyes,
and hair light; arched eyebrows; Grecian nose; the mouth a fine one and
indicative of firmness; the whole countenance pleasing, intellectual
and
expressive. The portrait in "Graham's Magazine" for January,
1843,
has no resemblance to her whatever.
——
EPES SARGENT.
Mr. Sargent is well known to
the public as
the author of "Velasco, a Tragedy," "The Light of the Light-house, with
other Poems," one or two short nouvelettes, and numerous
contributions
to the periodicals. He was also the editor of "Sargent's
Magazine,"
a monthly work, which had the misfortune of falling between two stools,
never having been able to make up its mind whether to be popular with
the
three or dignified with the five dollar journals. It was a "happy medium"
between [column 2:]
the two
classes,
and met the fate of all happy media in dying, as well through
lack
of foes as of friends. In medio tutissimus ibis is the
worst
advice in the world for the editor of a magazine. Its observance
proved the downfall of Mr. Lowell and his really meritorious "Pioneer."
"Velasco" has received some words of
commendation
from the author of "Ion," and I am ashamed to say, owes most of its
home
appreciation to this circumstance. Mr. Talfourd's play has,
itself,
little truly dramatic, with much picturesque and more poetical value;
its
author, nevertheless, is better entitled to respect as a dramatist than
as a critic of dramas. "Velasco," compared with American
tragedies
generally, is a good tragedy — indeed, an excellent one, but,
positively
considered, its merits are very inconsiderable. It has many of the
traits
of Mrs. Mowatt's "Fashion," to which, in its mode of construction, its
scenic effects, and several other points, it bears as close a
resemblance
as, in the nature of things, it could very well bear. It is by no
means improbable, however, that Mrs. Mowatt received some assistance
from
Mr. Sargent in the composition of her comedy, or at least was guided by
his advice in many particulars of technicality.
"Shells and Sea Weeds," a series of
brief poems,
recording the incidents of a voyage to Cuba, is, I think, the best work
in verse of its author, and evinces a fine fancy, with keen
appreciation
of the beautiful in natural scenery. Mr. Sargent is fond of sea
pieces,
and paints them with skill, flooding them with that warmth and
geniality
which are their character and their due. "A Life on the Ocean
Wave"
has attained great popularity, but is by no means so good as the less
lyrical
compositions, "A Calm," "The Gale," "Tropical Weather," and "A Night
Storm
at Sea."
"The Light of the Light-house" is a
spirited
poem,
with many musical and fanciful passages, well expressed. For
example
—
"But, oh, Aurora's crimson
light,
That makes the
watch-fire
dim,
Is not a more transporting sight
Than Ellen is to
him.
He pineth not for fields and
brooks,
Wild flowers and
singing
birds,
For summer smileth in her looks
And singeth in her
words." |
There is something of the Dibdin spirit throughout
the poem, and, indeed, throughout all the sea poems of Mr. Sargent — a
little too much of it, perhaps.
His prose is not quite so meritorious
as his
poetry.
He writes "easily," and is apt at burlesque and sarcasm — both rather
broad
than original. Mr. Sargent has an excellent memory for good hits and
no little dexterity in their application. To those who meddle
little
with books, some of his satirical papers must appear brilliant. In
a word, he is one of the most prominent members of a very [page
78:] extensive American family — the men of industry, talent
and tact.
In stature he is short — not more
than five feet
five — but well proportioned. His face is a fine [column 2:]
one; the features regular and expressive. His demeanor is very
gentlemanly.
Unmarried, and about thirty years of age. |
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