Book: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861




The same picturesque truthfulness characterizes his descriptions of
individuals. In the present volumes he has analyzed and represented a
wide variety of human character, separated not only by personal, but
national traits. Philip II., Farnese, and Mendoza,--Olden-Barneveld,
Paul Buys, St. Aldegonde, Hohenlo, Martin Schenk, and Maurice of
Nassau,--Henry III., Henry of Navarre, and the Duke of Guise,--Queen
Elizabeth, Burleigh, Walsingham, Buckhurst, Leicester, Davison, Raleigh,
Sidney, Howard, Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, and Norris,--all, as
delineated by him, have vital reality, all palpably live and move before
the eye of his mind.

The method which Mr. Motley has adopted is admirably calculated to
insure accuracy as well as reality to his representation of events and
persons. His plan is always to allow the statesmen and soldiers who
appear in his work to express themselves in their own way, and convey
their opinions and purposes in their own words. This mode is opposed to
compression, but favorable to truth. Macaulay's method is to re-state
everything in his own language, and according to his own logical forms.
He never allows the Whigs and Tories, whose opinions and policy he
exhibits, to say anything for themselves. He detests quotation-marks.
His summaries are so clear and compact that, we are tempted to forget
that they leave out the modifications which opinions receive from
individual character. The reason that his statements are so often
questioned is due to the fact that he insists on his readers viewing
everything through the medium of his own mind. Mr. Motley is more
objective in his representations; and his readers can dispute his
summaries of character and expositions of policy by the abundant
materials for differing judgment which the historian himself supplies.


_Life of Andrew Jackson_. By JAMES PARTON, Author of the "Life of Aaron
Burr," etc., etc. 3 vols. 8vo. New York: Mason Brothers. 1860.

We criticized Mr. Parton's "Life of Aaron Burr" with considerable
severity at the time of its appearance; and we are the more glad to meet
with a book of his which we can as sincerely and heartily commend. The
same quality of sympathy with his subject, which led him in his former
work to palliate the moral obliquity and overlook the baseness of his
hero, in consideration of brilliant gifts of intellect and person, gives
vigor and spirit to his delineation of a character in most respects so
different as that of Jackson. This man, who filled so large a place
in our history, and left perhaps a stronger impress of himself on our
politics than any other of our public men except Jefferson, was well
worthy to be made a subject of careful study and elucidation. Mr. Parton
has given us the means of understanding a character hitherto a puzzle,
and deserves our hearty thanks for the manner in which he has done it.

We think the book remarkably fair in its tone, though perhaps Mr. Parton
is now and then led to exaggerate the positive greatness of Jackson,
who, as it appears to us, was rather eminent by comparison and contrast
with the men around him. But there were many strong, if not great
qualities in his composition, and so much that was picturesque and
strange in the incidents of his career and the state of society which
formed his character, that we have found this biography one of the most
instructive and entertaining we ever read. If Mr. Parton sometimes
exaggerates his hero's merits, he is also outspoken in regard to his
faults. If here and there a little Carlylish, his style has the merit of
great liveliness, and his pictures of frontier-life are full of interest
and vivacity.

Mr. Parton begins his book with a new kind of genealogy, and one suited
to our Western hemisphere, where men are valued more for what they
themselves are than for what their grandfathers were,--for making than
for wearing an illustrious name. He shows that Jackson came of a good
stock,--pious, tenacious of opinion and purpose, and brave,--the
Scotch-Irish. He then tells us how young Jackson imbibed his fierce
patriotism, riding as a boy-trooper, and wellnigh dying a prisoner,
during the last years of the Revolutionary War. He lets us see his hero
cock-fighting, horse-racing, bad-whiskey-drinking, studying law, and
fighting by turns, leaving behind him somewhat dubious but on the
whole favorable memories, yet somehow getting on, till he is appointed
District-Attorney among the wolves, wildcats, and redskins of Tennessee.
The story of his emigration thither and his early life there is
wonderfully picturesque, and told by Mr. Parton with the spirit which
only sympathy can give.

A great part of the material is wholly new, and we are at last enabled
to get at the real Jackson, and to gain something like an adequate and
consistent conception, of him. We are particularly glad to learn
the truth about Mrs. Jackson, after so many years of slander and
misunderstanding, and to find something really touching and noble,
instead of ludicrous, in the grim General's devotion to his first and
only love. We get also for the first time an understandable account of
the Battle of New Orleans, made up with praiseworthy impartiality from
the accounts of both sides. Nor is it only here that the author gives us
new light. He enables us to judge fairly of the sad story of Arbuthnot
and Ambrister, and throws a great deal of light on many points of our
political history which much needed honest illumination. The book is of
especial interest at the present time, as it contains the best narrative
we have ever seen of the Nullification troubles of 1832. Mr. Parton not
only shows a decided talent for biography, but his work is characterized
by a thoroughness of research and honesty of purpose that make it, on
the whole, the best life yet written of any of our public men.


_Poems_. By ROSE TERRY. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1861. pp. 231.

We forget who it was that once charitably christened one of his volumes
"Prose by a Poet," in order that the public might be put on their guard
as to the difference between it and the others,--inexperienced critics
are so apt to make mistakes! The example seems to us worth following,
and, were this dangerous frankness made a point of honor in title-pages,
we should be able at a glance to distinguish the books that must be
bought from those that may be read. We should then see advertised "The
Ten-Inch Bore, or Sermons by Rev. Canon So-and-so,"--"Essays to do Good,
by a Victim of Original Sin,"--"Poems by a Proser,"--"Political Economy,
by a Bankrupt," and the like. We should know, at least, what we had to
expect.

We do not mean to apply this to Miss Terry; but her volume reminded us,
by the association of opposites, of the title to which we have referred.
We had long known her as a writer of picturesque and vigorous prose, as
one of the most successful sketchers of New England character, abounding
in humor and pathos; but we had never conceived her as a writer of
verse. The readers of the "Atlantic" remember too well her "Maya, the
Princess," "Metempsychosis," and "The Sphinx's Children," to need
reminding that she has qualities of fancy as remarkable as her faculty
for observing real life. Miss Terry seems in this volume to have sought
refuge from the real in the ideal, from the jar and bustle of the
outward world in the silent and shadowy interior of thought and being.
Her poems have the fault of nearly all modern poetry, inasmuch as they
are over-informed with thought and sadness. By far the greater number of
her themes are abstract and melancholy. It appears to us that her mind
moves more naturally and finds readier expression in the picturesque
than in the metaphysical; and in saying this we mean to say that she is
really a poet, and not a rhymer of thoughts. "Midnight" is a poem full
of originality and vigor, with that suggestion of deepest meaning which
is so much more effective than definite statement. "December XXXI."
gives us a new and delightful treatment of a subject which the poets
have made us rather shy of by their iteration. We would signalize also,
as an especial favorite of ours, "The Two Villages," and still more the
very striking poem "At Last." But, after all, we are not sure that the
Ballads are not the best pieces in the volume. The "Frontier Ballads,"
in particular, quiver with strength and spirit, and have the true
game-flavor of the border.


_Harrington_. By the Author of "What Cheer?" Boston: Thayer & Eldridge.

One of the most impossible books that man ever wrote. A book which one
could almost prove never could be written, and which, as an illogical
conclusion, but a stubborn fact, has been written, nevertheless.
"Harrington" is an Abolition novel, the scene of which is laid in
Boston, with a few introductory chapters of plantation-slavery in
Louisiana. Its principal merit is its burning earnestness of feeling and
purpose; and earnestness is sacred from criticism. Whenever the warm,
pulse of an author's heart can be felt through the texture of his story,
criticism is mere flippancy. But, at the risk of making our author's lip
curl with disdain of the sordid insensibility that refuses to join
in his enthusiasm throughout, we shall venture to remind him that
enthusiasm is no proof of truth, whether in argument or conclusion.

The introductory chapters, containing the flight of the slave Antony
through the Louisiana swamp, are almost unequalled for unfaltering
power, for gorgeous wealth of color. Many of the glowing sentences
belong rather to passionate poetry than to tamer prose. The agonized
resolution that turns the panting fugitive's blood and body to
fire,--the fear, so vividly portrayed that the reader's nerves thrill
with the shock that brings the hunted negro's heart almost to his mouth
with one wild throb,--the matchless picture of the forest and marsh,
lengthening and widening with dizzy swell to the weary eye and failing
brain,--all are the work of a master of language.

When the scene shifts to Boston, the language, which was in perfect
keeping with the tropical madness of Antony's flight and the tropical
splendor of the Southern forest, is extravagant to actual absurdity,
when used with reference to ordinary scenes and ordinary events. All the
force of contrast is lost; and contrast is the great secret of effect.
The lavish richness of our author's words is as little suited to the
things they describe as a mantle of gold brocade would be to the
shoulders of a beggar. Even the loveliest of young women is more likely
to enter a room by the ordinary mysterious mode of locomotion than to
"flash" into it like a salamander. That it was possible for Muriel
Eastman, in gratifying her "vaulting ambition" by a very creditable
spring over the parallel bars, to "toss the air into perfume," we are
not prepared to deny, having no very clear notion of the meaning of
those remarkable words; but when, we are told that Mrs. Eastman was
"ineffably surprised, yet more ineffably amused," we must be allowed to
enter an energetic protest. Harrington himself is perhaps a trifle too
"regnant" to be altogether satisfactory; and there are many similar
extravagances and inaccuracies.

The social intercourse of the ladies and gentlemen in this book is
particularly bad. It seems as if the author were ignorant of the usages
of good society, and, impatient of the vulgar ceremony of inferior
people, had seen no way to assert the superiority of his two fair ladies
and their unimaginable lovers, except making them dispense with all
such observances whatever. His uncertainty how people in their position
really do act has hampered his powers; and he is not that rarity, an
original writer, but that very common person, one who tries to be
original. Real ladies and gentlemen are not reduced to the alternative
of either being embarrassed by the ordinary social rules or disregarding
them altogether; they take advantage of them. It is a false originality
that is singular about ordinary forms; it is only the tyro in chess who
is "original" in his first move; Paul Morphy, the most inventive of
players, always begins with the customary advance of the king's pawn.

There is the usual partiality--one-sidedness--common to the writings
and orations of our author's political school. It may well be doubted
whether in reality all the virtues have been monopolized by the
Antislavery men, all the vices by their opponents. Our author only hurts
his own cause, when he invests with a halo of light every brawler
who echoes the words of the really eminent leaders. Because one
Abolitionist, who has sacrificed power and position to his creed, is
entitled to praise, is another, who perhaps, by advocating the same
doctrines, gains a higher position, a wider influence, perhaps an easier
support, than he could in any other way, to share the credit of having
made a sacrifice? One would not disparage martyrs; but Saint Lawrence on
a cold gridiron, and the pilgrim who boiled his peas, are entitled to
more credit for their shrewdness than their suffering. Our author,
however, makes no distinction; and a natural result will be that many of
his readers, knowing that in one case his praises are undeserved, will
be slow to believe them just in any case. And not only are all of
this particular school disinterested, but they are all among the
master-intellects of the age, apparently by definition. Mr. Harrington
himself is the commanding intellect of the story, perhaps because of his
belief in the greatest number of heresies,--being somewhat peculiar
in his religious views, believing in woman's rights, considering the
marriage ceremony a silly concession to popular prejudice, giving
credence to omens, active as an Abolitionist, and--to crown all--holding
that Lord Bacon wrote Shakspeare's Plays! We sympathize entirely with
the author's indignant protest against thinking a theory necessarily
inaccurate because it contravenes the opinion of the majority.
Certainly, a new thing is not necessarily wrong; but neither is a new
thing necessarily right; and we are heartless enough to pronounce the
"Baconian theory" rather weak than otherwise for a hero.

We cannot close our notice of this book without commending the old
French fencing-master as particularly good. He talks very simply and
well on matters that he understands, and is silent on those that he does
not understand,--affording in both respects an excellent example to the
more important characters.

* * * * *


RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS

RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.


The North American Review. No. CXC. January, 1861. Boston. Crosby,
Nichols, Lee, & Co. 8vo, paper, pp. 296. $1.25.

Marion Graham; or, Higher than Happiness. By Meta Lander. Boston.
Crosby, Nichols, Lee, & Co. 12mo. pp. 506. $1.25.

Harry Coverdale's Courtship and Marriage. By Frank E. Smedley.
Illustrated. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 357.
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Life in the Old World; or, Two Years in Switzerland and Italy. By
Frederika Bremer. Translated by Mary Howitt. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson
& Brothers. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 488, 474. $2.50.

One of Them. By Charles Lever. New York. Harper & Brothers. 8vo. paper,
pp. 187. 50 cts.

Human Destiny: a Critique on Universalism. By C.F. Hudson. Boston. James
Munroe & Co. 12mo. pp. 147. 50 cts.

Negroes and Negro-Slavery: the First, an Inferior Race; the Latter,
their Normal Condition. By J.H. Van Evrie, M.D. New York. Van Evrie,
Horton, & Co. 12mo. pp. 339. $1.00.

The Works of Francis Bacon. Vol. XIV. Being Vol. IV. of the Literary and
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The History of Latin Christianity. By Henry Hart Milman. Vol. IV. New
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The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus; to which are added those
of his Companions. By Washington Irving. Author's Revised Edition. New
York. G.P. Putnam. 12mo. pp. 494. $1.50.

The Westminster Review, for January, 1861. New York. Leonard Scott & Co.
8vo. paper, pp. 160. 50 cts.

Elsie Venner. A Romance of Destiny. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston.
Ticknor & Fields. 2 vols. 16mo. pp. 288, 312. $1.75.

The Deerslayer. By J. Fenimore Cooper. Darley's Illustrated Edition. New
York. W.A. Townsend & Co. 12mo. pp. 598. $1.50.

American Slavery, distinguished from the Slavery of English Theorists,
and justified by the Law of Nature. By Rev. Samuel Seabury, D.D. New
York. Mason Brothers. 12mo. pp. 319. $1.25.

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