Four Early Pamphlets Part 10

"Mind them not, my dear, said Louisa; you know, gentlemen, Miss Seymour is studious; it was a point in philosophy she wished to settle; that's all, Olivia; and kissed her cheek.

"Or perhaps, added Townshend,--the lady is young and inexperienced--she wanted a comment upon the bower scene in Cleopatra.

"Olivia suddenly raised her head and came forward, still leaning one arm upon Louisa. Hear me, cried she; I will be heard. What have I done that would expose me to the lash of each unlicenced tongue? What has there been in any hour of my life, upon which for calumny to fix her stain? Of what loose word, of what act of levity and dissipation can I be convicted? Have I not lived in the solitude of a recluse? Oh, fortune, hard and unexampled!

"Deuce take me, cried sir Charles, whispering Townshend, if I ever saw any thing so handsome.

"Olivia stood in a posture firm and collected, her bosom heaving with resentment; but her face was covered with blushes, and her eyes were languishing and sorrowful.

"For the present unfortunate affair I will acknowledge the truth. Mr. Burchel to me appeared endowed with every esteemable accomplishment, brave, generous, learned, imaginative, and tender. By what n.o.bler qualities could a female heart be won?

Fashion, I am told, requires that we should not make the advances. I reck not fashion, and have never been her slave.

Fortune has thrown him at a distance from me. It should have been my boast to trample upon her imaginary distinctions. I would never have forced an unwilling hand. But if constancy, simplicity and regard could have won a heart, his heart had been mine. I know that the succession of external objects would have made the artless virtues of Olivia pa.s.s unheeded. It was for that I formed my little plan. I will not blush for a scheme that no bad pa.s.sion prompted. But it is over, and I will return to my beloved solitude with what unconcern I may. G.o.d bless you, Mr.

Burchel; I never meant you any harm: and in saying this, she advanced two steps forward, and laid her hand on his.

"Burchel, without knowing what he did, fell on one knee and kissed it.

"This action revived the confusion of Olivia; she retreated, and Louisa took hold of her arm. Will you retire, said Louisa? You are a sweet good creature. Olivia a.s.sented, advanced a few steps forward, and then with her head half averted, took a parting glance at Burchel, and hurried away.

"A strange girl this, said Bromley! Devil take me, if I know what to make of her.

"I vow, cried sir Charles, I am acquainted with all the coteries in town, and never met with any thing like her.

"Why, she is as coming, rejoined the squire, as a milk-maid, and yet I do not know how she has something that dashes one too.

"Ah, cried sir Charles, shaking his head, she has nothing of the manners of the _grand monde_.

"That I can say nothing to, said Bromley, but, in my mind, her behaviour is gracious and agreeable enough, if her conduct were not so out of the way.

"What think you, Burchel, said Townshend, she is handsome, innocent, good tempered and rich; excellent qualities, let me tell you, for a wife.

"I think her, said Burchel, more than you say. Her disposition is amiable, and her character exquisitely sweet and feminine.

She is capable of every thing generous and admirable. A false education, and visionary sentiments, to which she will probably one day be superior, have rendered her for the present an object of pity. But, though I loved her, I should despise my own heart, if it were capable of taking advantage of her inexperience, to seduce her to a match so unequal.

"At this instant Louisa re-entered, and making the excuses of Olivia, the company returned to the carriage, sir Charles mounted on horseback as he came, and they carried off the hero in triumph."

ARTICLE V.

THE PEASANT OF BILIDELGERID, A TALE.

2 VOLS. SHANDEAN.

This is the only instance in which we shall take the liberty to announce to the public an author hitherto unknown. Thus situated, we shall not presume to prejudice our readers either ways concerning him, but shall simply relate the general plan of the work.

It attempts a combination, which has so happily succeeded with the preceding writer, of the comic and the pathetic. The latter however is the princ.i.p.al object. The hero is intended for a personage in the highest degree lovely and interesting, who in his earliest bloom of youth is subjected to the most grievous calamities, and terminates them not but by an untimely death. The writer seems to have apprehended that a dash of humour was requisite to render his story in the highest degree interesting. And he has spared no exertion of any kind of which he was capable, for accomplishing this purpose.

The scene is laid in Egypt and the adjacent countries. The peasant is the son of the celebrated Saladin. The author has exercised his imagination in painting the manners of the times and climates of which he writes.

ARTICLE VI.

AN ESSAY ON NOVEL, IN THREE EPISTLES INSCRIBED TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LADY CRAVEN, BY WILL. HAYLEY, ESQ. 4TO.

The public has been for some time agreed that Mr. Hayley is the first of English poets. Envy herself scarcely dares utter a dissentient murmur, and even generous emulation turns pale at the mention of his name. His productions, allowing for the very recent period in which he commenced author, are rather numerous. A saturnine critic might be apt to suspect that they were also hasty, were not the loftiness of their conceptions, the majesty of their style, the richness of their imagination, and above all, the energy both of their thoughts and language so conspicuous, that we may defy any man of taste to rise from the perusal, and say, that all the study and consideration in the world could possibly have made them better. After a course however of unremitted industry, Mr. Hayley seemed to have relaxed, and to the eternal mortification of the literary world, last winter could not boast a single production of the prince of song.

The muses have now paid us another visit. We are very sensible of our incapacity to speak, or even think of this writer with prosaic phlegm; we cannot however avoid p.r.o.nouncing, that, in our humble opinion, Mr.

Hayley has now outdone all his former outdoings, and greatly repaid us for the absence we so dearly mourned.

We are sensible that it is unbecoming the character of a critic to lay himself out in general and vague declamation. It is also within the laws of possibility, that an incurious or unpoetical humour in some of our readers, and (ah me, the luckless day!) penury in others, may have occasioned their turning over the drowsy pages of the review, before they have perused the original work. Some account of the plan, and a specimen of the execution may therefore be expected.

The first may be dispatched in two words. The design is almost exactly a.n.a.logous to that of the Essay on History, which has been so much celebrated. The author triumphs in the novelty of his subject, and pays a very elegant compliment to modern times, as having been in a manner the sole inventors of this admirable species of composition, of which he has undertaken to deliver the precepts. He deduces the pedigree of novel through several generations from Homer and Calliope. He then undertakes to characterise the most considerable writers in this line. He discusses with much learning, and all the logical subtlety so proper to the didactic muse, the pretensions of the Cyropedia of Xenophon; but at length rejects it as containing nothing but what was literally true, and therefore belonging to the cla.s.s of history. He is very eloquent upon the Shepherd of Hermas, Theagenes and Chariclea, and the Ethiopics of Heliodorus. Turpin, Scudery, Cotterel, Sidney, the countess D'Anois, and "all such writers as were never read," next pa.s.s in review. Boccace and Cervantes occupy a very princ.i.p.al place. The modern French writers of fict.i.tious history from Fenelon to Voltaire, close the first epistle.

The second is devoted to English authors. The third to the laws of novel writing.

We shall present our readers, as a specimen, with the character of that accomplished writer, John Bunyan, whom the poet has generously rescued from that contempt which fashionable manners, and fashionable licentiousness had cast upon him.

"See in the front of Britain's honour'd band, The author of the Pilgrim's Progress stand.

Though, sunk in shades of intellectual night, He boasted but the simplest arts, to read and write; Though false religion hold him in her chains, His judgment weakens and his heart restrains: Yet fancy's richest beams illum'd his mind, And honest virtue his mistakes refin'd.

The poor and the illiterate he address'd; The poor and the illiterate call him blest.

Blest he the man that taught the poor to pray, That shed on adverse fate religion's day, That wash'd the clotted tear from sorrow's face, Recall'd the rambler to the heavenly race, Dispell'd the murky clouds of discontent, And read the lore of patience wheresoe'er he went."

Amidst the spirited beauties of this pa.s.sage, it is impossible not to consider some as particularly conspicuous. How strong and nervous the second and fourth lines! How happily expressive the two Alexandrines!

What a luminous idea does the epithet "murky" present to us! How original and picturesque that of the "clotted tear!" If the same expression be found in the Ode to Howard, let it however be considered, that the exact propriety of that image to wash it from the face (for how else, candid reader, could a tear already clotted be removed) is a clear improvement, and certainly ent.i.tles the author to a repet.i.tion. Lastly, how consistent the a.s.semblage, how admirable the climax in the last six lines! Incomparable they might appear, but we recollect a pa.s.sage nearly equal in the Essay on History,

"_Wild_ as thy _feeble_ Metaphysic page, Thy History _rambles_ into _Steptic rage_; Whose giddy and fantastic _dreams abuse_, A Hampden's Virtue and a Shakespeare's Muse."

How elevated the turn of this pa.s.sage! To be at once luxuriant and feeble, and to lose one's way till we get into a pa.s.sion, (with our guide, I suppose) is peculiar to a poetic subject. It is impossible to mistake this for prose. Then how pathetic the conclusion! What hard heart can refuse its compa.s.sion to personages _abused_ by a _dream_, and that dream the _dream of a History!_

Oh, wonderful poet, thou shalt be immortal, if my eulogiums can make thee so! To thee thine own rhyme shall never be applied, (_Dii, avert.i.te omen_).

"Already, pierc'd by freedom's searching rays, The waxen fabric of his fame decays!"

ARTICLE VII.