EUGENESUE'S SOCIALIST NOVELS (From the "Londer,"—a new London Journal.)

New Zealander, Volume 6, Issue 478, 13 November 1850, Page 4

E UG E NE S U E'S SOCIALIST NOVELS (From the "Londer,"— a new London Journal.)

Les Mi/steres dv Peuple. Par Eugene Sue, Tomes 1. and 2. W. Jeffs. The appetite for trash must be voracious indeed when ten thousand copies of such a work as this 1 can be sold in France nlorn?. Or rather, to do the public justice, it is not so much the appetite for trash, as the love of seeing political and social questions treated by a romanci»t, which lends the interest of ruriosity to so miserable a production. Here is a socialist novel, dull beyond all known profundities of dullness, ridiculous to a height that almost towers into the sublime, yet moving amidst the agitatiug scenes of revolutions, and pretending to display the radical causes of a people's misery, and to point to an issue from their troubles, and boine by its title, its purpose, and its author's name into thousands of families. To us the fact is significant. The myslere which it reveds is, that people are ea^eily, blindly, clamorously seeking for gome solution of the' great questions flung up from the depths upon the surface by the universal convulsion of 1848. r lbe pamphlet— the aricle— the history, even the novel, is welcome which treats of the c questions. Yes, even Sue is welcome ; not to us, indeed, for to us he is nevci welcome ; but to thousands. They read his inept and wearisome declamations, they follow the slow windings of his impossible story, they rend the ample notes which he so diligently culls from newepapcm and ether recondite sources, and they accept withou' misgivingo the babe flatteries with which lie panders to their piejudices and ignorance. And. in their tolerance of this shameless effrontery of a w liter whose pioteniions to aristocracy, a little while ago, weic only less ridiculous thnn his pretensions to sincere democracy are now, we sec en evidence Gf the deep diequiel r.nd anarchy which agitates them ; any aid is welcome so thut il iwell theit ranks; the devil himsclfy fighting under their banner would recive his epaulettes, find the ensign of command. This it is v/hich malfcCfl the fortunes of demagogue 6 . Sad as it may make the philosophic onlooker, the madness lies not in the fart of the man chosen but in the cause choosing— not in the fact of so vulgai -minded a charlatan as Sue being erected into a " personage," but in the state of opinion which can render such alliance as his to any cause tolerable ! In no ono quality of a writer is Sus respectable. He is not sincere ; lib Sociulidin and Demociacy are transparent at tifices. He cmniot see the tiuth, and therefore cannot point it- He lias no power of depicting' human nature, but oi»ly a biutal melodramatic power of startling con tjastG, and lapid chanj,e^ of t,ceiie. lie has no bealilily sympathy with y?l«it is elevated and heioic, none even >vi>lj what is merely Lonest; but bis artifice conoi'tq in fastening upon some hideous buliject buying in üblU (he fascination of horror, and iv presenting this in violent contrast to tiie common amenities of life, 'f bus in his Mysteries of Paris we are alternately cairiedfiom the boozing k.-nto the biil-room—frora .je fetid atmosphere ol thieves und prostitutes to the i es,b breath of pastoral scenes. We are introduced to an amiable f ociety, of which the principal members are: I'olidori, poisoner on a grand scale; Le Maitre d'Ecolc, murderer by nature; Le Cboui incur, muidcrei by iiminct ; liarbiUon, muulerei » ■ka. fiuaiUe

Martial, murderciß; La Chouette, murderess ; Machine d'Oibignv, Gros Boiteux, murderers ; Bras Rouge, cutjmrsc and spy ; Mere Da ette and Pere Micou, recei. vers of stolen goods; Tortillard, mbbiT ; Le Vicomte de Saint Remy, forger; Jarques Ferranl, murderer, foiger, hypoerue, mid ever) thing else that is amiable and accomplished in crime j Cecily, a female demon ; L'Ogresse, procuress ; Madame Seraplnne, tlie accompli<e of Ferrand ; the Countess Sarah MacGrejjor, a diobolical woman, but one whose hands art — ,he exception is worth specifying — not stained witli blood. The Mysteres amid9t which moved characters such as these had that root bid kind of inteiest which centres in criminals and their doings ; and the book \t as carried all over .Europe by the fascination of what was intrinsically loathsome in it. The Jinf Errant followed : it also ndcoitly moved amidst depravities and horrors, and had great success, though considerably less than Les Mysteres. With these efforts Sue had exhausted the topics of crime. He tried it agiin with Mm tin, but the failure wai gigantic. He made another desperate effort with Les Sept Peches Capuaux, and heie it was thought he had reached the lowest deeps of imbecility and dulness, nntil Les Myslerei dv Peuplt appeared to show that in the lowest deeps yet unfathomable, in the profoundest abysses of stupidity theie are vistas of stu pidity even more appalling mid profound t Fortunately for hit pocket — and that is all he c«n possibly care for in the matter — Sue discovered, even while writing the Mysteries of Pant, that a glorious vein was to be opened by making novels " social." Tho unrest of society was so gieat, and the wrongs of tome classes so profound, that any dramatic presintaton of them would be " effective." Thai vein he opened. His knowledge was next to nothing, noi did lie e\en trouble himseU to acquire much ; Newspapers and Encyclopedias were at hand—what more facile or moie effective than to quote long passages therefrom in the notes, to support the wiudy declamation of the text? Finding that process successful, he has in the present work added some passages from Thierry, Guizot) and ether recondite sources, giving thus an air of em* dition to his pages which must somewhat a&tonibh even himself. Would yon know the purport of this accumulated erudition, and these grand philosophic expositions 1 I (i nothing less than the demonstration of this thrilling fact : In France there are two peoples, Francs and Gauls, a conquering and a conquered nution. The Francs are tbc noblei { they are miseinbie egotists, in»olent oppressors, heartless, mindless hypocrites with — oh crown of infamy ! — while hands. The Gauls are pure, generous, meek, forbearing victims, with great souls, exalted aspirations, «nd — dirty hands J Observe the essential point is cleanliness of hands : virtue is in in« vene ratio to soip. The Gauls are generous not because they are men, but because they are proletaires and have dirty hands. The Francs who do not work, how can they have generous feelings ? Well these two races, according to Sue, compose the French nation ; as the Normans and Saxons compose the English ; and, though you would scarcely have suspected if, the histoiy of France had been nothing put the oppiessive dominion of the one race over the other, which Sue now calls upon the oppressed Gauls to destroy. The plan is not without its adroitness. Conceive how flattering to the proletaires to be told that they too have an ancient lineage ! Birth ? Why, M. Lebrenn here traces his descent distinctly through a period of two thousand years — he is more noble than all the Faubourg" St. Germain. And übberve, not only has this family preserved its pure bit od through so man/ centu ies, it has been Imtoiical in each. The " sovereignty of Uio peoj.lo " was all very well, but what is thut, electoial ficti'n compared with the reality of '• no» bleese " ? What is le pcuple roi to le peuple-noble ? Surely, O proletaires I you will subset ib« to a journal the feuilleton of which u so unexpected a Herald's Office for you all ? " Come, buy, buy, buy .' here are genealogies, buy, buy ! No moie talk about ' inferior birth ' possible, buy, buy I" We wrre precipitate in Faying the book was dnll bsyond redemption ; the buffoonery of its philosophy is not without some interest ; and tins it must have been which carried us through the two volumes, for of story there is absolutely not enough to fill twenty page-. To those who wish to see what can be done in that depaitment of political philosophy we commend the book ; to those who wish for anything like a story, any picture of human life, or even any stalling; incidents," we can promise nothing but disappointment. Whe.efore have we gone out of our way to notice this book ? In general our seltction of foreign literature will be made upon a principle of diieciing the reader to woiks we consider really valuable; in tliis case we wished " to point a moral," and the moral is this : One of the mischievous effects of repressing or refusing open discussion of great questions is that passions are inevitably loused on both sides, and instead of Inquiiy we have Combat. I bring forward what I hold to be truth ; instead of listening to me and arguing with me, you attribute bad motives to me, and dangeious co7isequences to my truth • you are angry and I get angry also. War has begun. In such a struggle all weapons are good that wound, all missiles snatched up that can hit a mark ; and hence the lies of a Chenu are made to serve the purpose of discrediting the republican party, and the trash of an Eugene Sue serves to exasperate the rancour of the Republicans against the Conservatives.