power and pathos, are not surpassed by any thing that has yet appeared in the literature of our country. As a collection of sketches Swallow Barn is highly creditable to Mr. Kennedy. It possesses, however, too little of the character of a novel to be the subject of particular criticism. One of the cleverest and most interesting parts of the work is the history of the famous captain, John Smith, which, though dragged neck and heels into the second volume, for no conceivable purpose save to eke out quantity, is a romance in itself, which, in the hands of Mr. Kennedy, loses nothing of its importance. Horse-Shoe Robinson followed Swallow Barn after a brief interval, and is a regular novel, built up of plot, incident, scenery, and character. The plot we do not like, nor is it altogether original- the heroine being, unknown to the reader, the wife of the hero from the beginning, and doing a great many things, unaccountable enough in an unmarried lady, but to which you are in a degree reconciled when you find out the privileges that matrimony has given her. The incidents are generally striking and well connected; many of them are founded upon facts, and there is a vraisemblance about the whole of them which shows the thorough acquaintance of the author with the temper of the times of which he writes. The descriptions of scenery are eminently graphic, but they are too much in detail, and perhaps there are too many of them. In this respect there is too much of Swallow Barn in Horse-Shoe Robinson, and what was a merit in the former, clogs the narrative and intercepts the interest in the latter. Dealing, as he has done, with historical events, Mr. Kennedy is critically accurate in these matters. It is said that Scott rode the distance which Fitz James travels after the fight with Roderick Dhu, to be certain that he had not made the king of Scotland perform an impossibility. Whether Mr. Kennedy took the same pains to ensure accuracy we do not know, but we feel, in reading Horse-Shoe Robinson, as confident, as regards its historical facts, as though we got them from Ramsay or Chalmers. With regard to the characters of the novel, they are cleverly drawn, and perform properly their appropriate duties in the development of the plot; but, with the exception of Horse-Shoe, there is not one on which our memory rests as if we cared to shake hands again after our travelling in company was over. But HorseShoe is the soul of the novel an admirable conception, 1842.] Kennedy's Novels. 149 admirably executed-taking hold at once of the reader's mind, and concentrating in the rude, yet kindly soldier, all one's sympathies and affections. Clever as the work is in other respects, it is to the character of Horse-Shoe that it is indebted for its hold upon the public, and it is the Carolina blacksmith that will hereafter prove and vindicate the merit of the Maryland novelist. In Swallow Barn, description, rather than development of character through conversation, being the object, the dialogues are generally sprightly and well-turned; but in Horse-Shoe Robinson, the necessity of making the individuals introduced tell much of the story, and exhibit their motives and peculiarities in speech, has involved the author at times in discussions that are unnecessarily long, and delay rather than advance the plot. Mr. Kennedy's next work was Rob of the Bowl, the incidents of which belong to a very early period in the history of Maryland. The fault of this novel lies in the confusion that is caused by the number of characters introduced-characters that are not of the class used by the writers of fiction merely to fill up, but characters that are most of them of sufficient note and distinction to be worthy of detailed elaboration. It was said of a late popular opera, that it had material enough in it for a dozen modern operas, and so it may be said of the characters that Mr. Kennedy has collected together in Rob of the Bowl; there are enough of them for many novels. The consequence of this profusion is, that the book leaves no very distinct impression on the mind. You lay it down with regret, and when your mind reviews it you recollect in it scenes of exquisite finish-gay and sparkling-fit for the canvas such, for instance, as the admirable one between Dauntrees and the landlady-but you perceive the want of a powerful interest connected with any particular individual. Rob of the Bowl has few of the faults of Horse-Shoe Robinson. If it has its own faults, they are peculiar to it. There are no wire-drawn conversations, no unnecessary elaborations in describing natural objects; a free off-hand style is the character of the work; and if it does not hold fast on the public, it is because the rule we have mentioned has not been adhered to, and there is no one individual around whom the interest is so closely concentrated as to make him familiar ever after to the memory of the reader. The book wants a Horse-Shoe. We have referred to the profusion of strongly marked characters scat a sort of tered through this novel, the elaboration of almost any one of which would have supplied the desideratum. First and foremost of these, is one hardly more than sketched, though boldly sketched it is the proud, brave, impetuous, and generous Talbot- the soul of honor and courage one of the master spirits of the colony and marked in its history. Then there is Dauntrees, better worked out, but sketchy still, an original where one would hardly look for originality melting together of Harry Percy and fat Jack. Then there is the Lord Proprietary; then Arnold de la Grange, of whom we have but a glimpse, but an original of great capabilities. There is the landlady too, and the mountebank and his man, and Ganet Weasel, and the old priest, and the conspirators, and the village tailor-all capable of being made to stand out prominently from the general current of the narrative, and made resting-places for memory, but which, used as they there are, remind us of a brilliant picture, abounding in lights but wanting a concentration of effect. Of Mr. Kennedy's three novels, we prefer Swallow Barn, taken as a whole; and we find a reason for our preference in what we infer to be the causes of the difference between it and the others. Mr. Kennedy, although a novel writer, can hardly be called a novelist; that is, he is not a book-maker by profession. He is mixed up with many things besides the production of literary fiction. As a member of the legislature of Maryland, year after year, proscribed at last because of his activity in promoting works of internal improvement that were not popular at the particular time — a lawyer in active practice, identifying himself with the exciting controversy that was carried on with reference to a tariff, before the compromise act ended it-then a member of congress, left out with a change in parties to be again elected to the seat he now holds-it is very plain that Mr. Kennedy has had scant time to study, frame, and perfect the novels, which, during this busy life, he has given to the public; and consequently, Swallow Barn, which required no labor of this sort, which was but a collection of sketches without a plot just such a collection as could be made at intervals and for relaxation sake, is, as a whole, the best of his productions; but were Mr. Kennedy freed from other occupations, to devote himself to novel writing as a business, we know no author on this side of the Atlantic who possesses superior 1842.] Kennedy's Novels. 151 advantages, or who would work for eminence with better assurance of success. The last on the list at the head of this article is "Quodlibet." This is not a novel, though it abounds in characters and has some rude outline of a plot, so far as a detail of daily occurrences every where will always exhibit, but it is, undoubtedly, the ablest work that has yet proceeded from Mr. Kennedy's pen. Indeed the only regret is, that, being a political satire, and founded upon the events preceding the late presidential election, the interest that it derives from the immediate times is daily becoming less and less, and the sound, shrewd, and pungent remarks with which the work abounds will be forgotten along with the circumstances to which at first they were applicable. We would not be understood to endorse Quodlibet in a political sense; but as a literary production, a keen satire, in a word, in a "Pickwickian sense," it has our strong recommendation. The estimate. that was at once put upon it when it appeared, the great names to which it was attributed, showed the opinion entertained of it by the public, and we do not know a similar work in America that is to be compared to it. We deem the present time unpropitious to novel writing. The world on both sides of the Atlantic is in a state of fermentation, and the elements of society are in too great commotion to allow either writers of novels to prepare, or readers to peruse works of the imagination that require peace and freedom from anxiety to produce or appreciate. And again, even were the world drowsily quiet, the task of the novel writer of to-day is much more arduous than it would have been if he had lived thirty years ago. There are as many good critics of novels now as there were readers of them formerly. The public taste has grown nice, and the public demand regulating the profits; publishers have grown cautious, and a reputation must be established before a novel can be sold by the author at a price to compensate the mere labor of production. Where is the Children of the Abbey ? where the Scottish Chiefs? where the Three Spaniards? where the Mysteries of Udolpho, and a dozen others? Aye, where is Tom Jones? where is Peregrine Pickle? where Roderick Random even? They are to be found in circulating libraries, provided the libraries are old, but the public taste has left them. Some were too coarse, some too silly, some too extravagant, some too ridiculous all have been left high and dry as the This opinion, current of popular opinion has swept on. ART. VI.-Pantology; or, a Systematic Survey of Human Knowledge, proposing a Classification of all its Branches, and illustrating their History, Relations, Uses and Objects, etc. By ROSWELL PARK, A.M. Philadelphia: 1841. Hogan and Thompson. 8vo. pp. 587. "THE present work is offered as a guide-book to those who are seeking to explore the vast expanse of human knowledge. It aspires to be to pantology, or knowledge in general, what a map of the world is to geography." This passage, with which the author begins his preface to the work now before us, explains the meaning of the title, if not in abstracto, at least as that in which it is used on the present occasion. "It is to knowledge in general what a map of the world is to geography." In analyzing this sentence it will be discovered that the "outline" which the author intends to give of human knowledge, either comprises much, or is very deficient, according as the word geography is interpreted. If we understand thereby a mere description of our globe, such as could be given of it with the aid of a good telescope by an inhabitant of the moon, that is to say, the relative distribution of the submerged and the visible portions of its crust; the magnitude of continents and islands; the situation and outlines of seas and lakes; the courses and relative extents of rivers; the directions and elevations of mountains; if, in short, we understand by geography a description of the surface of the earth, independently of the 1 |