LITERARY NOTICES.
Reading edition
Donna Florida: a Tale. By the Author of 'Atlantis,' 'Southern Passages and Pictures,' etc. Charleston: Burgess and James.
'The poem,' says the author of this miniature pamphlet-volume, 'of which the four first cantos (he means the first four, no doubt) are here submitted to the reader, was chiefly the work of the writer's youth.' He does not claim, however, that this fact forms any sufficient excuse for giving it to the public at this late day; but offers rather the natural tenacity 'with which the mind treasures up, and seeks to preserve, the performances which revive its early associations.' We have run through these cantos with some attention. The story does not strike us as possessing either great originality or interest. The verse itself is after the model of 'Don Juan,' then recently published, and rife in the literary world; but like the thousand-and-one imitations which we have encountered of that most facile and felicitous composition, its 'laborious ease' cannot be concealed. With Byron, the play of fancy and of words was equally unconstrained, in this species of versification; but all his imitators have evidently been stretched upon Procrustean beds; and with all the seeming abandon of their manner, and the smirk of their 'varnished faces,' it has yet been but too evident that their situation was any thing but comfortable. In 'Donna Florida' however there is a good degree of cleverness. There are many thoughts interspersed throughout its cantos which the reader will encounter with surprise and remember with pleasure. Nevertheless we are compelled to say, that where the stanzas are most original, they are the least to our liking. We enter our protest against the writer's frequent habit of saying a plain thing in an involved, roundabout way, as well as against numerous words and similes which he employs. 'You can call a hat,' says Mr. Yellowplush, a 'glossy four-and-nine' or a 'swart sombréro;' but in the long run praps it's as well to call it a hat. It is a hat; and where's the use o' mystifying?' Would it not, for example, be 'as well' also, and quite as natural, to write 'half of the rest,' as 'the subdivision of the remaining moïety?' Or in saying that old jokes were laughed at, to express it in less magniloquent phrase than
'Old jokes found revivified expansion?'
Where does Mr. Simms find authority for such a word as 'voicing?'—'the voicings of a bird?' In any dictionary of the English language? Guess not! As little do we admire the simile which makes a lady's eye the 'polar light in love's astrology,' or which represents it as
—'peering beneath her forehead like a star, Bestowing a sweet glory on the sky.'
All these are 'affectations, look you;' and are in our judgment even worse sins against taste (to say nothing of truth) than the occasional instances of an opposite tendency which might be pointed out; such as 'the beast enjoying his grunt and stye;' or the coy damsel, of whom the writer says:
'One moment grows she most abruptly willing, The next, she slaps the chaps that think of billing!'
We should not have felt ourselves justified in passing unnoticed the defects which we have indicated; the more that the following stanzas evince the ability of the writer, when he gives to natural thoughts their natural expression, to avoid these and kindred errors:
'Glancing my vision o'er the world's affairs, Surveying this and that, of strange and common, Its double singles and divided pairs, Its human brutes and brutes that might be human, All vexing life with sad and fruitless cares, Yet all made agents of that creature, woman; I've come to this conclusion: that 't were better If we poor bachelors had never met her. 'Better we had not seen and could not fancy So sad and strange conception; could not want Her presence, nor beneath her necromancy Feel the torn bosom and vex'd pulses pant, With dreams and hopes that not a step advance ye To health or happiness, but rather daunt, At each impassion'd move, the weary spirit, That sees the joy receding as we near it. 'Better in single blessedness had Adam, Stout father-farmer, in his garden trod; Unvexed by daily strife with maid or madam, And free to eat his fruit and meet his God: I'm sure his fate had not been half so sad—am Certain he had not then been thrust abroad With breeches made of fig-leaves, quickly rended, More quickly than his wife could get them mended. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 'Have you not seen her in the public way, Snare-setting? In the ball-room marked her eyes, Pursuing, like a very snake's, her prey? And vainly would he dodge them, and be wise! In flight alone is safety. Do you stray Beside her, when the moon is in the skies? Or by the brooklet, or along the sea, Or in the garden, parlor, buttery?'
'Do you stray beside her in the—buttery!' Does not this word 'buttery' seem impressed for the sake of oddity and the rhyme? To our apprehension and ear it is objectionable, alike in truth and in sound; scarcely less so, indeed, than the close of the annexed lines, which require no comment. Don Ponce, a Spanish knight,
'Had passed his days in stupor most sublime, His nights in deep allegiance to his pillow; Untroubled by the crown, the church-bell's chime, Sleep, garlic, wine, and oil, a constant fill o'!'
In prose as well as in verse Mr. Simms, by common consent of his critics, fails in the humorous. It is not his rôle. How much more creditable, even than the foregoing, are the subjoined stanzas, illustrating the fact that it is mental and not physical suffering which constitutes the pain of death; the 'parting from those who loved and love us:'
'This is the mental death—the agony Beyond all pain of limb, all fever smart, All racking of the joints: this is to die; Sad burial of the hope that lit the heart; Love mourning, doomed affections lingering by, Muttering the words of death: 'We part, we part!' Ah! what the trial, where the pangs, the fears, To equal this sad source of thousand tears? 'And when the lamp of life upon a verge Unseated as a vision, sinks at last; And when the spirit launches on the surge Of that dark, drear, unfathomable vast We call eternity, its latest dirge Bemoans not pangs, still pressing, not o'erpast, But that all natural things, forms, stars, and skies, And the more loved than all, are fading from its eyes. 'Thus still beloved, though all relentless fair, I part from thee and perish. Never more Shall I win sweetness from the desolate air, Or find a fragrant freshness in the shore; The sea that images my deep despair Hath still a kindred language in its roar, And in the clouds that gather on our lee A mournful likeness to my soul I see. 'The sense of life grows dim; the glories pass, Like those of melting rainbows from my sight; Dark aspects rise as in the wizard's glass, Reflect my inner soul, and tell of night; Glooms gather on my vision, in a mass, And all my thoughts, beheld in their dread light, Rise like unbidden spectres; rise to rave Above the heart, which soon may be their grave.'
The purpose of the author to preserve this youthful effort of his muse from oblivion, by giving it in a printed form to the public, will not, we may believe, be subserved; for although portions of it are undeniably clever, yet as a whole it lacks the elements of life; a fact, indeed, of which the writer himself seems sufficiently aware, if we interpret aright the long introduction with which he has deemed it necessary to preface a short poem. The little volume, which is very neatly executed, is dedicated to one who is himself well qualified to appreciate, and on occasion to produce, good poetry—James Lawson, Esq., of this city.
Change for the American Notes: in Letters from London to New-York. By an American Lady. New-York: Harper and Brothers.
'Who jeers the Tartar, must beware of his dirk!' is a lesson which this well-tempered book will teach certain of our neighbors on the other side of the great water; for it contains stabs at national abuses and local follies, which 'pierce to the hilt;' and we are not sorry that at this moment, throughout the Union, this exposition of them as well as of the time-honored game of 'tit-for-tat,' has been as widely perused as the work which prompted it—the 'American Notes' of Mr. Dickens. This fact, we need not add, will prevent us from entering upon a detailed review of a work already so current, at the low price of one shilling. We shall only ask such of our readers as are at all sensitive in relation to the slurs upon our country and its institutions which may from time to time reach us from abroad, to bear in mind the ignorance in which they have their origin. 'One ought to have,' says our countrywoman, 'a temper as imperturbable as Franklin's, to hear patiently the absurd remarks made in England upon the United States. Here are hundreds of thousands, with ample means and leisure, whose reading is confined to certain portions of certain newspapers; yet one of this class will deliver his judgment upon America in a manner which shows his belief that what he says is decisive. There is, there should be, no appeal. He has spoken. Englishmen have a vague notion about America, and Indians, and General Washington, and there being neither king nor lords, and the storming of Quebec, and the burning of the Caroline, and the loss of the President! But as to the vast resources of our country; the nature of her laws and institutions; of her cities rising amid primeval forests; of the capabilities of her rivers and bays; of the love of freedom in her children, which love, men say, is the parent of all the best virtues that can adorn a state; of these things they know nothing. Talk to one of these persons about the cotton grown in the Southern States, and he will immediately speak of Manchester, where he has a cousin, a manufacturer, worth a hundred thousand pounds; mention one of those matchless prairies in the Far West (a noble sight, though Boz was disappointed,) and my gentleman, as soon as he is made to understand what a prairie is, turns the conversation to Salisbury Plain, or the moors of Scotland! These gentry generally are, or have been, connected with commercial pursuits, and plume themselves upon being, not reading, but practical men. I admit they are impartial in their ignorance, knowing as little of the past history of their own country as of the present state of ours,' * * * 'The English view America in such a petty spirit! They judge of it in the spirit that prompts their judgment in their own small matters; their clubs, or parishes, or corporations. They cannot conceive a nation without a titled and privileged aristocracy. What is not subserviency they consider anarchy; and then a country without a regular standing army! How can justice be administered by wigless judges? What but barbarism can exist, where poor men object to wear liveries! Then comes a summing up of American enormities: they sit in a manner the English do not; consequently the American way must be wrong. Vast distance, different customs and institutions, have caused a diversity of language, therefore the American language must be low; the Americans grow and use tobacco, and the necessary consequences are attributed to them as a national dishonor! How comes it that the French and other travellers do not dwell upon these things, but pass them over as matters of little moment? Is it jealousy, or ignorance, or littleness, on the part of the British?' It is all three; but America will be looked upon with far different eyes by and by; and in the meantime she is living down the slurs, slanders, and satires of her traducers, (which this little volume will teach us still more to disregard) every day. We have but one fault to find with the 'Change for the American Notes.' There is too much foreign coin in it. One who can write so well as our author, does not need to force French and Italian into English sentences, to show that she can do it, nor to eke out her pages with scraps of verse. Think of a hundred and fifteen little bits of poetry, from a single line upward, in a prose volume of eighty-eight pages!' 'T is 'too much poetry for a shilling!'
Harp of the Vale: a Collection of Poems by Payne Kenyon Kilbourne. Hartford: Case, Tiffany and Burnham.
This little volume comes to us recommended by the same neatness of mechanical execution which was displayed in the last edition of the poetical remains of the lamented Brainard, published in the same city. We are glad to see in it indications that the native State of that fine genius can still inspire poetic aspirations, and produce poetic minds. The young author of these fugitive pages deserves consideration; in a degree for what he has done, more for what his gifts promise. There are many passages and several entire poems of very considerable merit in the volume. 'The Skeptic,' with which it commences, being of the greatest length and importance, is perhaps also the best. None of the thoughts, however, can claim to be very original; yet they are evidently natural to the writer, and are set forth in flowing and well-measured verse. The opening lines are vigorous, and afford a good indication of the merit of the piece:
'No God!' O impious sophist! then are we Cast pilotless upon an unknown sea; Gazing all wildly on the void profound, Unknowing whence we came or whither bound: The forms around us are not what they seem, Men are but shadows, life is but a dream; And the bright worlds that run their glorious race Mere bubbles floating in the realms of space; Self-poised they roll, and self-illumed they shine, Rise without cause, and sink without design! Launched on the flood, we trim our fated bark, Beneath a sky low, desolate, and dark; No north-star hangs with fixed and steady ray, To light the lonely voyager on his way; Homeless and friendless on the billowy tides, Tossed by the hurricanes which no one guides, Now fired with Hope, now grappling with Despair, He sees afar some beacon's transient glare; Pursues it till it fades, then turns in gloom To meet his last irrevocable doom. What though the solace of his lot may be The meteor-dream of Immortality? That spark expired with the expiring breath— No morn shall break the iron sleep of Death!'
'The Maniac Maid' has some effective stanzas. One especially is picturesque and beautiful. The poor girl is represented as lingering around the sea-shore, watching for her lost sailor-lover:
'At eve, when nought is heard But the roar of the dashing wave, And the voice of the lone sea-bird That sings from her coral cave, She wanders forth all lonely The rocks and sedge among, And to the cold sea only Pours forth her plaintive song.'
'The Seminoles' is a very creditable production. Some fine lines also touching our native country and that ancient race, are found in 'Thoughts of Home:'
'Stern region, I love thee! Thy woodlands and waters Are linked with old legends of battle and love: There the wild warriors fought, and the forest's dark daughters Told their vows and adored the Great Spirit above. 'Frail wrecks of mortality! where are they now? Their glory departed long ages ago; And woman's smooth cheek and the warrior's stern brow Lie unmarked from the dust of the quiver and bow. 'Ay, I love thee, proud land! Thou hast eyes that are brighter, Made radiant with smiles, by no sorrows o'ercast; Thou hast forms that are fairer and hearts that are lighter, Than Romance e'er saw in her dreams of the past. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 'Bright home of my dreams! may I greet thee again! In city and country I've mingled with men, But they part and they meet with as little emotion As the icebergs that float on the desolate ocean.'
The last couplet here is very original and striking. 'Dying Well,' 'The Lost that Come not Back,' and others which arrested our attention, will be read with pleasure; especially 'Beauty and Fame,' which we regret we have not space to present entire. It will be seen, however, by what we have quoted, that Mr. Kilbourne has a good share of poetic feeling and capability of expression. He has not lived in the world in vain; but with an eye, and an ear, and most of all, a heart. Yet several things are wanting, before our young bard can become an effective poet, which doubtless he must needs desire to be. He has more sensibility than taste; the consequence of which is, that the best passages in his best pieces are marred by the proximity of such as are weak and infelicitous. Then again there is a want throughout the volume of condensation and energy. Mr. Kilbourne must gird himself to greater terseness and strength; he must chisel and refine with a severer taste and more assiduity, before he can reach the place where doubtless bright anticipations have at times placed him. We beg him, in all due kindness, to remember, that it is easier to jump in thought to such a conclusion than actually to attain it. We conclude with the expression of our hope and trust that his day-dreams in this regard, in common with those of other gifted and rising spirits among us, may not have been altogether idle.