86 IVANHOE - BRIGHT IMPOSSIBILITIES. The work before us shows at least as much genius as any of those with which it must now be numbered — and excites, perhaps, at least on the first perusal, as strong an interest: But it does not delight so deeply and we rather think it will not please so long. Rebecca is almost the only lovely being in the story-and she is evidently a creature of the fancy-a mere poetical personification. Next to her- for Isaac is but a milder Shylock, and by no means more natural than his originalthe heartiest interest is excited by the outlaws and their merry chief-because the tone and manners ascribed to them are more akin to those that prevailed among the yeomanry of later days, than those of the Knights, Priors, and Princes, are to any thing with which a more recent age has been acquainted. - Cedric the Saxon, with his thralls, and Bois-Guilbert the Templar with his Moors, are to us but theoretical or mythological persons. We know nothing about them-and never feel assured that we fully comprehend their drift, or enter rightly into their feelings. The same genius which now busies us with their concerns, might have excited an equal interest for the adventures of Oberon and Pigwiggin-or for any imaginary community of Giants, Amazons, or Cynocephali. (The interest we do take is in the situationsand the extremes of peril, heroism, and atrocity in which the great latitude of the fiction enables the author to indulge. Even with this advantage, we soon feel, not only that the characters he brings before us are contrary to our experience, but that they are actually impossible. There could in fact have been no such state of society as that of which the story before us professes to give us but samples and ordinary results. In a country beset with such worthies as Front-de-Bœuf, Malvoisin, and the rest, Isaac the Jew could neither have grown rich, nor lived to old age; and no Rebecca could either have acquired her delicacy, or preserved her honour. Neither could a plump Prior Aymer have followed venery in woods swarming with the merry men of Robin Hood.-Rotherwood must have been burned to the ground two or three times in every year--and all TRUTH PLEASES LONGER THAN FANCY. 87 the knights and thanes of the land been killed off nearly as often. The thing, in short, when calmly considered, cannot be received as a reality; and, after gazing for a while on the splendid pageant which it presents, and admiring the exaggerated beings who counterfeit, in their grand style, the passions and feelings of our poor human nature, we soon find that we must turn again to our Waverleys, and Antiquaries, and Old Mortalities, and become acquainted with our neighbours and ourselves, and our duties, and dangers, and true felicities, in the exquisite pictures which our author there exhibits of the follies we daily witness or display, and of the prejudices, habits, and affections, by which we are still hourly obstructed, governed, or cheered. We end, therefore, as we began-by preferring the home scenes, and the copies of originals which we know —but admiring, in the highest degree, the fancy and judgment and feeling by which this more distant and ideal prospect is enriched. It is a splendid Poem-and contains matter enough for six good Tragedies. As it is, it will make a glorious melodrame for the end of the season. Perhaps the author does better-for us and for himself-by writing more novels: But we have an earnest wish that he would try his hand in the actual bow of Shakspeare-venture fairly within his enchanted circle and reassert the Dramatic Sovereignty of England, by putting forth a genuine Tragedy of passion, fancy, and incident. He has all the qualifications to ensure success*-except perhaps the art of compression; -for we suspect it would cost him no little effort to confine his story, and the development of his characters, to some fifty or sixty small pages. But the attempt is worth making; and he may be certain that he cannot fail without glory. *We take it for granted, that the charming extracts from "Old Plays," that are occasionally given as mottoes to the chapters of this and some of his other works, are original compositions of the author whose prose they garnish: and they show that he is not less a master of the most beautiful style of Dramatic versification, than of all the higher and more inward secrets of that forgotten art. The Fortunes of Nigel. By the Author of "Waverley," "Kenilworth," &c. In 3 vols. 12mo. pp. 950. Edinburgh, Constable and Co. 1822. It was a happy thought in us to review this author's works in groups, rather than in single pieces; for we should never otherwise have been able to keep up both with him and with our other business. Even as it is, we find we have let him run so far ahead, that we have now rather more of him on hand than we can well get through at a sitting; and are in danger of forgetting the early part of the long series of stories to which we are thus obliged to look back, or of finding it forgotten by the public-or at least of having the vast assemblage of events and characters that now lie before us something jumbled and confounded, both in our own recollections and that of our admiring readers. Our last particular notice, we think, was of Ivanhoe, in the end of 1819; and in the two years that have since elapsed, we have had the Monastery, the Abbot, Kenilworth, the Pirates, and Nigel,-one, two, three, four, five,-large original works from the same fertile and inexhaustible pen. It is a strange manufacture! and, though depending entirely on invention and original fancy, really seems to proceed with all the steadiness and regularity of a thing that was kept in operation by industry and application alone. Our whole fraternity, for example, with all the works of all other writers to supply them with materials, are not half so sure of bringing out their two volumes in the year, as this one author, with nothing but his own genius to depend on, is of bringing out his six or seven. There is no instance of any such experiment being so long continued with success; and, according to all appearances, it is just as far from a termination now, as it was at the beginning. If it were only for the singularity of the thing, it would be worth while to chronicle the actual course and progress of this extraordinary adventure. Of the two first works we have mentioned, the Monastery and the Abbot, we have the least to say; and we believe the public have the least curiosity to know our opinion. They are certainly the least meritorious of the whole series, either subsequent or preceding; and while they are decidedly worse than the other works of the same author, we are not sure that we can say, as we have done of some of his other failures, that they are better than those of any other recent writer of fiction. So conspicuous, indeed, was their inferiority, that we at one time apprehended that we should have been called upon to interfere before our time, and to admonish the author of the hazard to which he was exposing his fame. But as he has since redeemed that slip, we shall now pass it over lightly, and merely notice one or two things that still live in our remembrance. We do not think the White Lady and the other supernatural agencies, the worst blemish of "The Monastery." On the contrary, the first apparition of the spirit by her lonely fountain (though borrowed from Lord Byron's Witch of the Alps in Manfred), as well as the effect of the interview on the mind of the young aspirant to whom she reveals herself, have always appeared to us to be very beautifully imagined. But we must confess, that their subsequent descent into an alabaster cavern, and the seizure of a stolen Bible from an altar blazing with cold flames, is a fiction of a more ignoble stock; and looks very like an unlucky combination of a French fairy tale and a dull German romance. The Euphuist too, Sir Piercie Shafton, is a mere nuisance throughout. Nor can we remember any incident in an unsuccessful farce more utterly absurd and pitiable, than the remembrance of tailorship that is supposed to be conjured up in the mind of this chivalrous person, by the presentment of the fairy's bodkin to his eyes. There is something ineffably poor at once, and extravagant, in the idea of a solid silver implement being taken from 90 WAVERLEY NOVELS. THE MONASTERY. the hair of a spiritual and shadowy being, for the sage purpose of making an earthly coxcomb angry to no end; while our delight at this happy imagination is not a little heightened by reflecting that it is all the time utterly unintelligible, how the mere exhibition of a lady's bodkin should remind any man of a tailor in his pedigree or be thought to import such a disclosure to the spectators. - But, notwithstanding these gross faults, and the general flatness of the monkish parts-including that of the Sub-prior, which is a failure in spite of considerable labour it would be absurd to rank this with common novels, or even to exclude it from the file of the author's characteristic productions. It has both humour, and fancy, and pathos enough, to maintain its title to such a distinction. The aspiring temper of Halbert Glendinning, the rustic establishment at Glendearg, the picture of Christie of Clinthill, and, above all, the scenes at the castle of Avenel, are all touched with the hand of a master. Julian's dialogue, or soliloquy rather, to his hawk, in presence of his paramour, with its accompaniments and sequel, is as powerful as any thing the author has produced; and the tragic and historical scenes that lead to the conclusion are also, for the most part, excellent. It is a work, in short, which pleases more upon a second reading than at first as we not only pass over the Euphuism and other dull passages, but, being aware of its defects, no longer feel the disappointment and provocation which are apt, on their first excitement, to make us unjust to its real merits. In point of real merit, "The Abbot" is not much. better, we think, than the Monastery-but it is fuller of historical painting, and, in the higher scenes, has perhaps a deeper and more exalted interest. The Popish zealots, whether in the shape of prophetic crones, or heroic monks, are very tiresome personages. Catherine Seyton is a wilful deterioration of Diana Vernon, and is far too pert and confident; while her paramour Roland Græme is, for a good part of the work, little better than a blackguard boy, who should have had his head broken |