THE WRITINGS OF SAMUEL WARREN. (From the British Quarterly Review.)

New Zealander, Volume 5, Issue 356, 18 September 1849, Page 3

THE WRITINGS OF SAMUEL WARREN. (From the British Quarterly Review.)

Thi; productions of Mr. Wanen'a pen have now, for « considerable time, enjoyed an unusual decree of populai favour. Making liia first acknowledged essay in the pages of a well known lea ling; periodical, he has availed himself to good purpose of the vantage ground thus afforded him ; and, by his subsequent successes as a writor of fiction, Ims confirmed the justness of the opinion formed of his capabilities by the acute and enterprising individual with whose name that publication has been so long identified. His own account of thii step, which proved tlie in>' tiative ono in his road t> popularity, (given in his Pre-« face to the fifth edition of the ' Passages from the Diary of a Late Physici m,') is interesting to those who, like ourselveß, sympathize with the early struggles, not of literary aspirants only, but of all who have by tbeir own efforts to achieve the position for which they know themselves to be fitted ; and wbo have to contend with difficulties even in the attaining that point of advantage, whence alone tlieir powers can effectually be brought to bear upon the original object of their just ambition, and, wanting which, their best efforts must be unsucceesful— their finest powers worse than useless. Archimedes himself could not move the earth without this prerequisite of a point to stand upon. Such, to compare small tilings with great, was exactly Mr. Warren's position, and the magazine above alluded to has eminently been his ' locus .standi.' The first chapter of the Diary wan, he tells u», offered successively to three of the principal magazines in London, and was in each instance relumed to him, with an intimation that it was not of a character likely to interest the public. The great Northern Magazine then occurred to him ; and, in a fit of despair, he left his thrice • rejected addresses at the publisher's, with a •trong suspicion that he should never see or hear anything more of them. The insertion of his paper next mouth, and a request that he would continue the series, formed a most agreeable termination of his anxieties, and certainly proved the foundation of his literary fortunes. These papers con inued to appear for a spaca of seven years, from 1830 to 1837, have iin?e gone; through live editions of their publication in a sepaute

form, suffered, we believe, Fiench and German trimslations, ami, further, have been stereotyped in A merica : h \ i'ry satisfactory amount of fame for a collection of short tales. Mr. Wan en's n<>xt attempt was a novel 'Ten Thousand a Year:' this attracted more attention than did his former sketches, to which, as a whole, it was supplier; but whether its subsequent ritcitlntion has been equally extensive we are not informed, tlis last appearance before the publ ; c ii in the woik whose title we have pluc <' < t the head of our paper (' Now and Then'), and which, wo belit-ve, reached a second edition in the course of two or three weiks Tint Mr. Warren's earlier productions display ability, and possess c nsiderable nieiit, we cordially admit. Indeed, the almost universal favour with which they have been receivcil sufficiently indicates that tins is the case; for, though we are not prepared to take our literary creed from the voxpopuli, (which is some times raised in accumulation of works whose highest merit is that of belonging to the milk. find- wuter school,) we uou'd yet render to it all fining homage. The multitude, though it may not be very discrimi nating in its opinion, is not, after all, wont to bestow its award where theie does not exist merit of some kind or other. Tde writer who has secured the suffrages of so extensive n (irele of readers as Mr. Warrcnlias done, undoubtedly pom'ssev pouer ; and pnwer we make ft point of treating with proper icpeet; alwajs, like good citizen! of thi i\ public of letters, reserving to ourselves the right of deciding what may or m«y not be comprehended in the term proper. But, while admitting tba> Mr. Warren's merits as a writer were obvioun, we never lost sight of the fact that his dements were equally so. We i.ever found ouiselves able to give an unqualified .issent to the pUudile which he earned : 'o us they appeared indisiuminitte, and in excess. We wore ' our inejwitli a difference,' ond ficqiiontly regretted that so piomism" a writer had no liteiary fiicnd who iroulrt do him the Pervice of pointing out the ciiors alike cf judgment and taste, which he habitually committed; and who might, if pns'ibln, lei'l him to b'stow upon bis mind that discipline and education which it appeared to us so greatly to require. His lively narration, Bturing incident, frequent energy and facility o composition, together with many touches of tiue ratho*, that stirred up our sympaihies with those various • forms of human woe' with whicb it was his good pleasuie to deal, could not hut make a favourable inunction upon us. But, coupled with these excellences, he exhioited more faults than it was ever cur chance to meet in such good company ; and marvellous h it to us th it the world made up its mind to shut its eyes to them. We could not say, ' Oh, how one ugly trick has spo led the sweetest and the beet,' lor Mr. Warren hdd a variety of ways in which he contrive*! to lower the tone f . i compositions. And, though it may require tome moral courage to find fi:ult. where most, if not all, have agreed to praise, we must brkfly allude to the defects of these much admired papers, which, in our judgment, detracted so greatly from tin ir merits We certainly see no reason why ihe abilities of a writer, however respectable they may be, should scieen from due censure, faults of so obstructive and pievalenta character as are those rce are about to notice : faults which are, in many instances, so inwrought into the very tex'ure ol the story, that to gft rid of them would requite that it should bo re-written throughout. Our own opinion is, that the glaiing offences of a liighh,endowed writer deserve a severer castration than would be adjudged to his less üble neighbour ; nor do we doubt that Mr. Wan en's school day* will furnish him with a fact most apposite to our rigid sentencenamely, that ibe cleverest lad generally secuies for liimse'f the lion's shuo of that iti iking ciUicum dispensed by pcd.'goguest Violent, exaggerated feeling, moibiil sentimentalism, a Wont of refinement, both in s'yle and conception— iry, at times an absolute air of vulgarity, and much choice pathos, are the sins which wa have to charge upon these tale*, reilly clever thuusjli they may bo considered, in the main. We saw in them, when they firfct came under our notice, much indication of talent; but that maturity of it, which Would alone have justified the popular opinion of them, was wanting. They evidenced acrudeness of mind and feeing— not merely a defective raanifestati >n of them. Not only were ideas, which, treated with delicacy and tasie, woulJ have told well, spoiled in thHr elaboration by some coarie touch or olber, but some of these idcai themselves betrayed, as we thought, structural defects in the writer's mind—a complete ignorance as to the true mode of acting uron the emotions of the renders. Hence his tragedy at times beroires melodrama — a thing for the gallery. His paihnic scsnes acquit e a shong tinge of the ludicrous. We hope we are not more bard-hearted tlian our neighbours, but truth compels us to own that we have often lauglied, where we ought to have cried, iv the ' Diary.' Now, seeing how much fainting-fits, shucks, hybtericks, and s-il-vola'ile, go to the composition of the ' Phy»icanV moving scenes, shall we, we tru-t, be counted as utterly out of the pale of civi izition for having occasionally received our author's extravagances very much in the spirit of the stolid, and particularly ill-mannered, Mr. Buichell, of whom it is recoided, that he sat in the corner, • and cned, Fudge !' Now, lor a u-.an of Mr. Warun's abilities to rely so much on 'these vulgar elements of tragedy, to use f>uch quantities of such very ' raw matorin],' in iU manufacture 1 , was intolerable ; ' and we have the less p«tience with it, because, on other occasions, he evinces that he can stii the passions in a legitimate way : a circumstance, that perhaps demonstrates the correctness of our opinion, that he labouied under some defect as to the power of appreciating the different c between right and wrong in matter* of t»sle. But not only is this mode of exciting the emotions pjor iv the extreme, in a literary point of view; it h-is the further disadvantage of not being true to native. Educated persons, and Mr. Warren's tales chiefly refer to such, are not usually the subject of uncontrolled feeling. They do tint go promptly into fas and hysterics, wtien sufi" ring in ' mind, body, nnd estate ;' and cspechlly, not in groups, as he, in the extreme liberality with whith he dispenses these affections, represents them as doing. There is something supremely ridiculous in the idea of three persons (see the tale • Mother and Son') heing found all senseless on the floor together ; not suffocated by charcoul, which would have been umxeepiionable, but having had their feeling? greatly shocked 1 Nor is a scene in the ' Thunder-struck,' in which the curtain falls upon the following tableau, kss meritorious, 'pout rire :' Miss p. ... .i. cataleptic; her mother fainted; Mi\ N ■, her lover, after a burst of delirium, fallen down senseless another lady on the verge of hy&teiics; and the nursf: crying violently 1 A scene which irresutably re< alls the well known one in Sheridan's 'Critic,' in which tverybody pouts his weapon at everybody else ! Again, in the ' Baronet's Bride,' (which is a fine example of this false taste ) there is a passage to match these, which we with we had space V transcribe; it is inimitable in its w.jy. The intaue baronet, after 'howling in a ternlie manner,' in an elm tree, falls down ; is brought home apparently dead ; his wife is totally inncnsible, having fallen into a succession of swoons after th» madmnn had mafic his e«cap«. ; Lady Jalia is ' shrieking in violent hysteucs ;' and, 'in short

it seemed not impassible that she might lose her reason, and Sir Henry and Lady Anne their lives' — ' Make the gruel thick and 6lab I' The ' Physician' may think that in thus highly colouring his scenes, he is laying on pur« ennnine ; but, alas, it turns out to be, what to geo'ogists, and praziers, is known as 'mere 'ruddle!' Indued, the liberal way in which Mr. Warren dinp< nsci his horrors, is provoking— to laughter, as well as vexation ; and we are sure he will forgive us, if we paialiel it from our personal experience, and lay how pleasantly it has reminded us of the interminable romances whwh we were wont to weave in our early days, («e should rather pay nights, for in their cont-truction we cheated ourselves of many an hour of sweet, childibh "sleep,) and whose super-eminently tragic and pathetic character was accomplished after this same fu&luon, by accumulating upon the heads of the actoi s tl eivin all the hor« ion, both of body and mind, which our not unfertile brains could suggest; seasoning the whole with pi eat plenty of shrieks, groani, fainting-fits, and 'gleams of madness.' Sal-volatile was then to us n thing unknown, el-e had our hecatomb undoubtedly received its due libation ot this paihit c and pungent drug We can assute him, our own imnll souls were greatly moved thereby ; as we doubt dot have been many lodged in greater bodies, by his romancing, of the same pattern. Nor have we the slightest doubt that our respective fic'ions, each highly successful in their <c y different spheres, were indebted for this point of interest to one common source— a d.ish of the vulgar appetite for the hcrrible ! In one respect we Miipa^sed Mr. Warren, for when our stork of evils was utteily u«cd up, we killed our patients, p rforming tlieir death obsequies with great unc ion ; ami then bi ought them to h e again, next day, ready to go through a fresh coune of our tragics. We must he excused adverting to tin's, on account of the comfort and encouragement we derived from seeing a similar style of fiction meet with so much success ; it made us think so much better of our own, which whs, to speak candidly, very affecting. While it fuither helps us to ascertain the charaet r of those offences against taste which prevented our estimating Mr. Warren so highly as we believe most people did ; namely, that they were tad juvrn;lities. Now, far be it from us to say, that in tales of sorrow it is utterly ina-lmissible to represent the giving way, umltr severe pressure, of the powers both of mind and body. In weak, ill-rcgulatad minds, nothing is more common ; and even in those of supeiior mould, a moment of pi ys'.cal weaKness, oiover mastering agony, acting upon exhausted energies, and nerves too long in a state of tension, may occasionally overpower the firm spirit and unshaken will. Thus far it is true to nature/ But in the first case, little or no sympathy is excited : the second, as we have said, but rai ely occurs ; and, we would add, by its rarity produces that effjet which Mr. Warren, mistaking the true means of moving 1 the passions, so often tries to accomplish by its lavish introduction, Whenever he is at a loss to intensify the inteient, he is sure to lesort to a shriek or groan ! or pobsibly to the introduction of some image absolutely repulsive— as that of Miss Dudleigh making her own shroud, in the ' Ruined Merchant ;' or, in ' Rich and Poor,' the child playing wi h its father's body, upon which the chill ol death has already p>st — a thing which we are persuaded is no lest unnatural, than it is horrible. Ttiere is an unhealthy tone about such fiction. It is productive of morbid excitement And him we must deem very far fiom being a master of his art who not on'y u cs his instruments amis-!, but is also evidently ignora it as to what are Irs proper tools. Criticism, as hard, seaichingr. and common letuical as that which Coleridge tells us Bowyer wjs wont to bestow upon the poetty of Christ's Hospital, would have been invaluable to Mr. Wirren in his earlhr days. We ulwayi thought him worth it, and he would have stood it well. He would not have ' been snuffed out by an article.' And yet, spite of the mamllous lark of judgment and taste exhibited in the«e tales — judgment m ihs ■election, ta>.te in the handling of his subjec's — we must repeat, that the ability which they displu- is unquestionable. The interest with whic'ithry are read, both by indiscriminate admirer* and those who, like oaiselves, find many causes of oftVcs in them, affords satisfactory evidence on this point. There nuist be some buoyant materials to float so mmh of a nature that does not usually swim. Hid 'it been otherwise, we should not have penned our remarks. Had Mr. Warren been a man of inferior powers, his defec's, both of mind and manner, might have quietly sunk into oblivion together. But he is not so ; end it hai often been to us matter of astonishment than in h'm so much that was able should have been linked to so much that was puerile. Ability, and the various qualities essential for its manifestation, are usually better balanced, than we see them in his early and very successful productions. * * * * There is one point on which we have much pleasure in doing justice to Mr. Warren, and that ij, that when his tales have a mom], and most of them have, it is a eood one. We believe their defiit,n is lo promote virlue, and even religion ; though wr, do not always agree with him us to Uib means with which he endeavours to further these end*. We willingly concede to him that which he claims, the having meant well ; but this without altering our opinion ai to the obj ctionable character of one or two of thrse tales. Theae are vices, degrading alike in their nature and consequences, of which, in the pages of th>», novelist, it 1 were a shame even to speak,' tluu^h it be to warn mankind from their commission Against these there stands an eternal record, that such 'God will judge ;' and there would we leave it. The writer stands confidently on hit moral end — to remkr vice hateful. We doubt it not ; while we aie equally confident that in detailing 1 such horrors, he has sinned, not only against taste, but azainst the delicacy of moral feeling. Let such subjects be left veiled in their own dishonour ! May we, while at tin's ungeninl duty of fault-finding, alio remark, that in his desire, as we presume, to suppoit his assumed character of physician, the writer occasionally trenches too much upon the reserve with which medicil facts and details are usually treated in society. Mr. Warren's next production, ' Ten Thousand a Year,' is a work of hglier pretensions than his 1 Diary,' and, spite of its numerous and striking imperfections, it upon the whole an improvement upon its predecessor. The idea of it is happily chosen. Ten thousand |pounds a year, though a sum which your schemer adds to his income by a slip of the pen, (we speak that which we know,) u an important responsibility ; and taking this view of it, it may well furnish matter, not only of vivid interest, but serious thought to a mind that does not content itself with the mere surface of things. And thus is it handled in the volumes before us. The moving the passions of his reader is still the writer*! main object; and we are bound to say that here it is generally legitimately effected, and by the absence of the rant and extravagance which did him such good service on his first appearance as a candidate for literary favour. It, how* tTer, bear* the trace of those peculiarities of mind and manner upon which we have already animadverted. There are the same indications of a want of refinement,

both in tlio conception and handling of hii subject : nay on absolute tinge of vulgarity is communicated both to persons and things where evidently nothing could be further from his intention than the investing them with such an attribute. Some of these might be. distinctly pointed out; and we may instance among others, the extraordinary expressions which he puts into the mouth! of the ladies of the Aubrey family, whom lie wishes to reptesent a* patterns rf everything that is refined and excellent among tho higher classes of the English gentry : expressions that Mr. Warren must know are never heard from the lips even of women of his own, the middle class, and which are, indeed, only suited to the vocabulary of our unpolished friend Mr 1 ,. Gamp, to whose ' Gracious heavenlies !' ths ' Goodness!' 'Gracious!' and • Gracious mercy's' of Mis. and Miss Aubrey bear a strong family resemblance. We know that he does not intend to make the Aubreys vulgar, so that (he only explanation of his having done so that presents itself to us is one not very complimentary to the author — lamely, that he could not help it. Other fault! of this nature are less easily demonstrated, but the reader is sensible of them . ■ he proceeds by a sudden griting fet ling, like tl • tcritch of a course pencil, and by the tone of the picture when completed. He feels that the scene is, in part, vulgarly conceived. The earlier chapter! that relate to the Aubreys may afford instances of this; vrihch is, perhaps, mest app rent when Mr. Warren lays his scenes in high lite, to which he is somewhat addicted. Nor are hU designedly rulgar groupi free, as we think, from this air of vulgarity. He really appears to have almoit a con amove talent for vulgar scolding ; he pours it out in such torrents. We are oveidone with co lueness; winch, appr>priate an it may be to the sort of chataiters brought forward, we would yet willingly have excused. We eire not to have finished drawings of such disagiccable objectr. His frequent awkwaid, £ossippin£ sort of familiar style, must also range under thu head of want of refinement. It is ditfigured by affected quaintnesbes and obsolete pluases, and is a great drawba k upon the merits of the work. An occasional quaint, or ev^n homely expression, we are well aware, may give stiength and energy to composition ; nor are we such precisians ns tot illy to interdict the use of aucb. But the author of • T«n Thousand a Year ' avails himself too liberally of (lirir services; and hii ' «ure enoughs, 1 ' to be sure,' ' flustered,' ' flurried,' 'quoth,' (winch last most in i p prop rial ely ushers in many of the •peeches of an elegant youug lady,) 'hath,' • I protest,' • I declare,' and that evei lasting • inkling,' wh'ch leomi to be always on duty, ce-tam!y ad«i neither vigour nor delicacy to his style. Some of these woids are vulgar anywhere ; others are only tolerable in very olloquiul intercourse ; and we can but assign one of two leasons for t'ieir constant introduction ; either iliat it is of set purpose, in which case bad taste must stand, responsible for them ; or that it is done without thought which leads us to the conclusion that phrase* of tl U chaiacter most naturally present themsehd to Mr. Warren's mind. And heie we would repeat that it is his merits make us so (he will tliiak) hypercritical. Had he less claim upon our attent on» we should be les< intoleiant of las, to us, intolerable li erary offences. But the woik ceildinly shows considerable j.iogiebs in that discip'ine and education of hs mind, tasu 1 , and feeling, which wa have point d out as wunting in tl c • Dimy.' It is to i well k no mi to render any (sketch « I i's design and woi king out requisite h're ; our remarks lire mule upon the supposition tf its beii q fami' ar 10 cur reader*. * * * * ' Ten Thousand a Year' we always thought would have been ira roved by compression : it fce.ned to us needlessly spun out. Events and penons, no WH3S essential to the story, are introduced; and its dJai , as is often the case wi h Mr. Wan en, is rather tuesome. It bearß the impres-. o( a strong piofcssion 1 bias, and the wri era legnl lore is slulfu ly worked up in the development of the plot. To us, howler, it appears somewhat redundant ; and though amusing, ai we have heard, lo tluse 'lenrned in the law,' must, we should suppose, have the same effect on the mind <f unp-ofessimiil reiders genera'ly. They w<u'd hre I een con'ent with fewer paiticu'ars of t hat which o them is, in a grca degree, unintel igible. His tubj - d'nate characters are of very various merit. Some f t em, as we h'«v»J beiore observed, mignt well have leen dispensed with; others would have sufficed had they lem meicly sketched in. His men of bunneis are good ; sound, clear-hendtd, real. Il'shimour s not much to our taste. If he could hive tound in his heart to excise a conside.al 1> portion of t'»e broad farce which disfigures this composition, we beleve t e work would have bo ne the operat'on well ; no; would it have been attended, in surgical phiaue, by a iy loss of substance! Mr. NY arren gives frequent and distin t utterance to his political and ecclesiastical views in the course of this tale. We never object to any man's doing tli is ; and with reference to the jesting style in which he occasionally does it, would only remirk, tb,,t the mn.ts of the jeit, in all such case?, will be decided upon according as the reader may or may not sympathize with the opinions or the writer. "We us'ia'ly considei, as a very good joke for us, that whi h, against us, we at once pronounce to be miseiably poo.-. The general itktiU ot tlie novel are » peihaps, best evilenced by the iiteiest with which the ri ader, passing hastily, possibly impatien ly, over its various tcdiousne;s, pursues the inn in de ign of the str ry, which presents to us many y e les and passages of re.il excellence. We may add, ne gives us toj much 0° himself in it, telling us his own impression of characters and circumstances brought forward in it, in that gosmpuig sort of style to which we have already alluded. We fear we mny have been thought to dwell somewhat ungraciously upon the fuults < f the compositions, which, thus far, we have been consiJering, to the neglect of their better quaii ien. But the position which we have taken, that of placing ourselves somewhat in opposition to the current opinion passed upon them, has made it imperative upon up to state the grounds of our dissent. And this we have done the more freely, on account of the pleasanter duty in reserve for ue, the introduction to our readers of Mr. Warren's last and very recent work : a work which fully bears out our original impression, that he was capable of better things than those then tendmed to us ; of nioie equal efforts, more sustained exee'lence ; that he needed not have offended the taste and tried the patience of his readers so unsparingly : _ a work that almost compels us to conclude that, in the remarks, depreciatory of the former creations of his genius, which we have been under the necessity of making, Mr* Wunen will himself, in these his more mutuie days, coincide ; for we cannot suppose that the mind to which we owe ' Now and Then' can be silisfied with the 'Diary' and 'Ten Thousand a Year.' We are p'eased to find that Mr. Warren's own good s nse ha?, at last, done for him that which the ciitical tribe are to blame for not having pressed upon his attention in the eailier stage of his literary career. It has sobired his judgment, trained and educated his mind and feelings, refined his taste ; and the result is, a woik wotthy of his reputation ; one of which his pathos is pure, tie interest vivid, the design elevated and noble; while the whole is delivered, with but few and slight txc ptions, in a ityle worthy of it, equally clmitc and expressive.