148 66 Literary Prospects of 1845. the epithet "cheap and nasty," is pretty much at an end, though we cannot quite count upon its extinction till it receives the coup de grace of the Copyright Law," which will put an end, International we hold, to its nastiness, without injury to its cheapness. This celebrated system should not be allowed to pass away into oblivion without its historian. There is many a useful lesson to be gathered from it. Lockhart once commenced a caustic review of the Ettrick Shepherd in Frazer's Magazine with the pun, This Hogg has made a sty of English Literature" a bon mot which might serve as a motto for the undertaking. If we would see the small literary vices rankling and festering without restraint, we may see them there. Nothing has been too mean or poor-spirited for that system to produce. It was pregnant in nauseous puffs, unworthy of a mountebank, petty inuendos, and all the corruptions of false literature from an oblique, unworthy insinuation to a gross libel. Native authors were neglected, despised, insulted; foreign authors were mutilated, pillaged and insulted, besides. Ingratitude was among the least of the current vices. Misrepresentation and falsehood were its The good writers were not only taken companions. possession of, their works altered and thrown upon the public without their just honor and responsibility, but they were made the cover for the circulation of the worst licentiousness. The whole was well characterized by an author who suffered from its injustice, but who will triumph when it will be all forgotten, as "the crimson and yellow literature." These were the colors under which it sailed-under which this vile craft went forth from the booksellers' counters-the hues of blood and the plague. It threatened, indeed, to be a moral pestilence, and was attracting the notice of the Grand Jury, lecturers and the pulpit (the Rev. Erskine Mason, of Bleecker street, made it the subject of two sermons) when it was arrested by the natural laws of trade. The cupidity of publishers had overstocked the market, and the traffic fell. Let it perish. We are not disposed to deny that there were good books circulated through the same agencies, but the evil was not the less certain. If any good at all was sown, its fruits are to be reaped in a different manner. Doubtless a taste for reading was diffused by the cheapness of books, and books will continue to be [Feb., published at low prices; but the line will in future be more strongly drawn between honesty and fraud in publishing. cheap system from over-production, one of Incidentally with this decline of the the chief incentives of the system-the rapid publication in England of some of the most popular books of modern times, has ceased with the exhaustion of the first labors of Dickens, Lover, and the race of publishers now disposed to do last of the Bulwer novels. Were a new they could regain their old ascendency their worst, it is scarcely possible that for mischief-making with the press and the public. They cannot again get into vogue and currency. author is, therefore, in a measure free The American from a prejudicial foreign competitionnot prejudicial in itself, but in its adjuncts. The due healthy circulation of the works of Dickens and others in tageous, strengthening and enlarging the course of trade, would have been advantive writers, uniting the two countries resources of publishers, stimulating naby the strongest bonds, and diffusing a taste for sound literature over a widely spread reading public. felt in a quarter where it was unexpected, The corruption of this bad system was and has not, so far as we are aware of, been hitherto traced,—in the deterioration of American literature itself. This does not, at first sight, seem quite obvious. Let us look at it in one phase. A besetting sin of our literature is the spirit of puffery which runs through it and around it. authors of the country belong to the range In spite of the fact, that most of the of minor literature; that the poets rarely exercise themselves on subjects embracing any great range of invention, but write short poems, occasional verses; and that the genius of many of the best prose writers is summed up in the character of clever essayists; that we have some good travellers, but no Humboldts; some preachers, but few divines of the great English school from Jeremy Taylor or, earlier down, to Robert Hall;-without any regard for the reality, nearly every American authors. There is scarcely a epithet of panegyric has been wasted on word left for a new Milton, a Bacon, or Shakspeare, should such be destined to arise in the Western hemisphere. sudden cacoethes laudandi seemed to have seized the press and thrown it into paroxysms of admiration from which it has, as yet hardly recovered. What Carlyle A calls the furor biographicus especially L raged. These biographies were often illustrated by portraits and autographs, which served sometimes to neutralize the text for one saw at a glance, to parody the line of Ovid, that the attributed work, the books, (if any,) written were quite beyond the capacities of the phrenological material to make them out of. In literary execution these lives" were excellent parodies of that model of classic biography, "The Memoirs of P. P., clerk of this Parish." It was not enough to say of an author that his production was marked by sincerity, or a good purpose, a happy style, or it had wit, or fancy, or some allowable combinations of these, but all were heaped together and plastered on the back of the writer with some still more general count' as the lawyers say, including each and every possible contingency. If the reader need any proof of this, let him consult the files of the newspapers and periodicals and read the prospectuses of all the new journals, which, one and all, promise the very opposite of these things-to avoid trash' and write honestly and independently. This was the fact a fact encouraging to mediocrity, which throve and fattened on this banquet of notoriety, but disgusting to and avoided by true merit. Its connection with the system we have alluded to was this: It was felt that American authors were oppressed and driven out of the market by the state of the trade; the strong feeling of nationality in the Press was aroused; and it was determined, however unconsciously, that all the geese that should be produced this side of the Atlantic should be called Swans. Royalty is said proverbially to be very short in its way to conclusions-but this Republican road seems still shorter. Thank Heaven, that, too, is passing away. other passage covers the whole ground But enough of the false. We turn to the true. America has a great and noble task before her in literature, and we firmly believe the power and capacity to do it. The beginnings are faint and scattered, but the elements are here. When Dr. Johnson, as executor of Mr. Thrale was surveying the brewery which was sold for one hundred and thirty-five thousand pounds, he answered to a spectator, "we are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats but the potentialities of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice!" In these dim attempts at American literature, in the mere fact that people read and write at all, taken in connection with the natural scenery and adaptation of the soil, and the character of the people destined to fill the land, we read the sure elements of a glorious future. With such a people and such a soil-given, as in ancient Greece, simply the letters of Cadmus-and we are sure of the result. It is morally certain. It is yet to be seen that the wit or ingenuity of man or his imagination is more sluggish here than in the Old World. The Time and the Motive will do all. A quick-witted, inventive people, fertile in resources, a people who have hitherto failed in nothing the world had a right to ask of them, who have gone farther in the solution of probAmerican Literature, in the hands of lems of government than any other people, these false defenders of mediocrity, re- who have given a wider example of dominds us of two passages in one of the mestic comforts, who have subdued works of Jean Paul. Speaking of a fop, mountains and thickets and whirlpools, who wrote what he called Poems, he says and shown therein their imaginations by of him "His poems, like most poems the extent of their hardihood, who have of the present day, resembled the Muses done all this laughingly, unconsciously, as -for they were genuine children of if without effort;-from a people simple, memory." A pungent and rather startling brave, devout, what are we not to expect essay might be written on this prolific when these energies shall be turned in theme; and such, we are given to under- the direction of the National Literature? stand by a hint in a late number of our There is no fear that the work will lancontemporary, the "Democratic," is al- guish. Genius shall have here her home. "hath a taste to it," under the pleasant barren, the brook shall sing with a ready prepared, by a writer whose pen These rocks and valleys shall not be title of "American Cribbage!" The murmur sweeter than its own"; the land scape shall have its twofold attraction of the eye and the memory; men shall be united by stronger than political ties, when they love and hate-are friends, fathers, husbands, brothers and sisters by the strong link of a common sentiment breathed by the fresh original books of the land. We shall not hear then of foreign opinion ;-Europe shall come to us, and transplant her grove of Ilyssus and vale of Tempe, her Paris and London. Hot erat in votis. We believe it; but there is much good work to be done beforehand. It will not be the destiny of ourselves, perhaps, to see it, or of Mr. Griswold to record it. We are no friends of precise prophecy. We cannot say of genius, it will be here or there, but the spirit of God breathes it, and lo! a Homer, a Shakspeare. How much precisely has been done towards the construction of a national literature we cannot, if we would, state in one article. We have done much. There are Franklin, and Jefferson, and Hamilton, in philosophy and political science, to whom, of a later day, are to be added Bowditch and Webster; in metaphysics we have Edwards, whose reputation is European; in theology Dwight and Taylor; in history Bancroft and Prescott; in poetry, Bryant, Dana and Brainard; in fiction and polite literature, Cooper and Irving; in morals, Channing and Emerson; in the fine arts, Allston, Powers, Crawford, Forrest; and others in all these, who have "won golden opinions" by works of unquestioned merit. In even our cursory survey, however, we become aware of several deficiencies which have not been attempted to be supplied. We have no great poem of action or invention, at all approaching an Epic character. Much, too, of our minor verse is wanting in originality and a hearty, spontaneous vigor. It partakes too much of study and imitation. We need a national song writer of true lyrical fervor; and indeed, poets in every department, of the true passion. We have descriptive writers, but no Cowper or Thomson; wits in verse, but no Butler: narrators, but no Scott or Crabbe. Next to the Epic is the Dramatic, in which we are equally deficient. Is passion extinct among us, that there should be no drama? The exhausted stage asks for it the sympathies of the public demand it; our enjoyments are as keen, our sensibilities as acute, as those of other people; our anger is as loud, our scorn as deep seated and silent. For the gentler muse of Comely we have gay laughter, and sportive intrigue, and follies enough of our own to set up every degree of genius from Ben Jonson to Foote. Let some of this work be done in 1845. Some of the authors of the country have just issued their promises to pay-let them execute them. The prospectuses of several new magazines for 1845, are as gay and inviting as such drafts upon Hope ever were. They have our best wishes for success. Let every thing be done during the new year in a genuine spirit; and be the product little or great, it will be something positive for the future. In the meantime let us sing good Bishop Berkeley's American Doxology-forgetting not to toil with Shakspeare's bees, "The singing masons building roofs of gold." It is this spirit of earnest, courageous toil that is most needed. We would urge it for every department of literature; stimulating the historian to profounder research, the poet to a more concentrated self-knowledge and a more truthful pursuit of nature, the novelist to acquire that spirit of art which is both an incentive and restraint to his powers; and we would return again to the periodical writer with whom we set out, bidding him resist the facile temptations of his craft. His labor is the support of the rest. He counsels and applauds, and gives advice to both author and the public. Let him be faithful as many (the number is daily enlarging) are faithful, and by force of his own usefulness and examples it will no longer be a moot question, whether an unrestrained press is a blessing or a curse to a country. It will bear the natural and just fetters of order, benevolence, refinement. Unity among the authors of the country would rapidly advance the cause of a national literature. Hitherto there has been no common interest. Each has fought his battle single-handed. Union among authors, bringing together the force of their aggregate works, would create a sentiment, a feeling in their behalf, a voice to which booksellers would be compelled to listen. The taboo of the American author in the booksellers' stores in Broadway, Cliff, Chestnut and Washington streets must be broken. The 7 L good manuscripts, which lurk here and there in desks and portfolios, must be drawn forth and published-not breathe and die under the bookseller's counter as it mostly does now, but be actually published as if the world were not ashamed of it. Authors have a common cause in this matter, which may be advanced by mutual correspondence, the advocacy of the literary journals, or a more definite union. If they do not take the matter in their own keeping, publishers, they may be sure, will do nothing for them; and the public is a kind of nobody, so far as this matter is concerned, without their plastic hand. Now is the time. Let there be only the single eye and an honest effort, and the cause is gained. When a bookseller once begins to deal with an American author, as he does with his paper maker or bookbinder, recognizing MSS. as value received-the first great triumph is secured. The pursuit of authorship will then be rescued from mere amateurs and quacks, and restored to its legitimate followers, the modest sincere men, who are now driven into silence or poverty. Some of the truest literary men we have been acquainted with have been the worst paid, while the makers of school books, vampers up of English matter, have got all the money, and a few of the most eager pretenders have got all the fame-nay, call it notoriety. Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, eyes, ALISON'S HISTORY OF EUROPE.* The period embraced in this work of Mr. Alison furnishes more copious materials for a brilliant narrative than any period of the same length in the history of nations. To commence with a description of the earthquake that opened under the Bourbon throne," and let down a whole dynasty of kings, and end with the battle of Waterloo, which overthrew an Emperor and an Empire, is to commence and end with all that is exciting in the history of man. The selection of this period shows the taste and character of the writer. Of an ardent temperament and highly poetic imagination, the terrific scenes that followed each other in such rapid succession from the first outbreak in Paris, are, to him, but so many separate passages in a great tragedy of which Bonaparte was the hero, and Waterloo the closing act. The history of this period is, for the most part, a history of battles, in the description of which lies Mr. Alison's peculiar excellence. He is indeed a wonderful example of the ease with which a writer of vivid description and brilliant style can take captive our judgment and blind our criticism. Ask the hundreds who speak in rapturous terms of his work, Why they are so enchanted with it, and the answer is, "he is a splendid writer-do you remember the description of the Battle of Wagram, Borodino and Waterloo?" Of the truth of the great political events he narrates, the skill manifested in their grouping, and the causes which led to them, we hear nothing of praise. The arrangement of the work is exceedingly faulty, confusing us more than we ever remember to have been confused in reading the history of so short a period. The style, which is animated and racy, making us eye-witnesses of the terrific scenes he depicts, is yet often inflated and eminently careless. A sentence in the opening paragraph of the very first chapter, is but one of many examples. In speaking of the French Revolution he says, "From the flame which was kindled in Europe the whole world has been involved in conflagration, and a new era dawned upon both hemispheres from the effect of its expansion." The figure here introduced by "conflagration," and carried out by "expansion," Mr. Alison may think very good English, but it is any thing but good rhetoric. History of Europe from the commencement of the French Revolution in 1689, to the Restoration of the Bourbons in 1815. By Archibald Alison, F. R. S. E. Advocate. In four Volumes. New York, Harper & Brothers. The opening pages of such a work we should expect to see devoted to the causes which produced the French Revolution-the great event which commences the history. But we were not prepared to find nearly forty pages occupied in drawing a parallel between it and the English Revolution under Cromwell, going back to the English Settlement and the Danish and Anglo-Saxon Conquests. The English Revolution does not come into the period of his history; and to lead us down through the half barbarism of England in the early ages, and through all her feudal history, to give us the causes of the "Rebellion," is as foolish as it is confusing. Were one to write a history of England or France from its origin, it would be interesting to trace how civilization and liberty grew step by step, till they reached their present state in the nation. But the inappropriateness of the thing is our least objection. His philosophy and logic are false from beginning to end; and here, at the outset, we state the grand fault of Mr. Alison in compiling this history. He is a high Tory, and nomore fit to write of this period, ushered in by the outbreak of the Republican spirit, and carried on with all the wildness of newly recovered and untamed freedom, than an Ultra Chartist of Birmingham to write the feudal history of England. A man falsifies history in two ways-first by falsifying factssecond, by misstating the causes of those facts. The last we consider the most culpable of the two, and of this crime Mr. Alison stands heavily charged. He set out with the determination to malign Republicanism and exalt Monarchy, and not satisfied with wrongly coloring facts, he exposes himself to the most ridiculous blunders, and contradicts his own assertions to secure his end. Whenever he speaks of Democracy," or the "Rights of the people," he evidently has before him the riots of Birmingham, the Chartist" Bill of Rights," and the petition of three millions of Englishmen for universal suffrage. This picture warps his judgment sadly, and his philosophical "reflections" on the French Revolution are a mixture of false logic, self-contradictions, and merest common places from first to last. Thus, at the outset, in the very parallel we were speaking of, he says of the English Revolution, "the pulpit was the fulcrum on which the whole efforts of the popular leaders rested, and the once venerable fabric of the English Monarchy, to which so large a portion of its influential classes have in every age of its history been attached, yielded at last to the force of fanatical phrensy." "In France, the influence of religion was all exerted on the other side," &c. In other words, true religion was with the royalists in both rebellions, and fanaticism or infidelity with the republicans. Now in the first place, if this be true, why lead us down through the dark ages to show the causes of the English Revolution-why talk to us of the struggle for principlewhy boast of the moderation of the people during its progress, and the regard to indi vidual rights. Fanaticism is not so discriminating and just when it seizes the sword, and Mr. Alison has falsified one of the most important events of English History. The statement is equally untrue with regard to the French Revolution. No attack was made on religion, nor did it enter one way or other into the conflict as a great clement, until the priests began to declaim from the pulpits against the assembly, denouncing every act of the reformers as sacrilegious, and exciting the people to resistance. The church took sides with the throne and the aristocracy, as it had been partner in their oppressions and rapacity, and of course went down with them. And instead of the Cromwellian rebellion growing out of the fanaticism of the priests it sprung from the Parliament itself. The des potism of Charles I., his dangerous encroachments on the liberty of speech, and on the Constitution, were borne with till longer endurance became a crime. The whole history of the Long Parliament denies this statement of Mr. Alison. Charles I. trampled on the laws of England: he was tried for his crime and beheaded. The struggle that followed is chargeable on those who defended the throne in its wrong-doing. There was no need of rebellion; and there would have been none but for the tyranny of the king and the injustice of his friends. The conflict was between the parliament and the throne. The people sided with the parliament, and the throne went down. It was a struggle for the supremacy of British law and British rights, and hence was conducted with the moderation and justice which the cause demanded. Now, turn to the French Revolution--and what lay at the bottom of that? Suffering, unparalleled suffering-suffering that had been accumulating through ages. There were really but two classes in Francethe privileged and unprivileged-the |