plexity;" "obvious to suppose ;" "obvious to conclude;" "uravoidable to conclude;" "copious epistle;" "copiously interrogated;" "copious and elegant accommodation ;" "my departure was easy and commodious;" "the barrier that severs her from Welbeck must be as high as heaven and insuperable as necessity;"" a few passengers likewise occurred, whose hasty," &c. No one who has once read the description of Carwin as he is first introduced, can ever forget it. Yet we are told, "shoulders broad and square, breast sunken, his head drooping, his body of uniform breadth, supported by long and lank legs, were the ingredients of his frame." The ingredients of a pudding! Brown is much more remarkable for putting his thoughts into the form of questions than Godwin ever was, yet to ask and to question are scarcely to be met with through the whole six volumes, but instead of these, we have interrogated, interrogations, and even interrogatories. It is true that the kind of writing we speak of does not show itself equally in all his stories; some few of them are tolerably free from it. This perverted taste is much to be regretted; for after the excitement of a first reading (when less attention is paid to the style of a powerful story), we are perpetually feeling the incongruity between the strong characters and passions and terrific scenes, and the language in which they are presented to us. The distinguished novelists of this day must by and by suffer from defect in style, while the beauty and truth of language of our old dramatists will help to the increased pleasure they give the more they are studied. Brown himself has beautifully said, "The language of man is the intercourse of spirits,' the perfect and involuntary picture of every fixed or transient emotion to which his mind is subject." We wish he had remembered this, and left his passions and thoughts to speak their own tongue. Though Brown's style is never rich and idiomatic, in some of his writings we find it clear and simple; and it is probable that it never would have been so wide of good English as we generally find it in his stories, had he received what is called a public education. It is often amusing to hear some very clever men who have never received such an education, talk about colleges and college learning. They have most magnificent notions upon the subject; and it is a hard matter to persuade them that they can write better sense, and put it into better language too, than the greater part of those who have been entered and graduated regularly. You may confess that such a course of instruction is 1 of great benefit to the industrious, and no loss to the idle, even, that at college something is absorbed by every brain which is capable of being imbued at all with what is intellectual. This is not enough to allow. There is to these men an undefinable charm and change wrought within that circle into which they have never entered; and they conclude that they have little to do except to bear their inferiority like good christians. They must try something, however, which shall gloss over this inferiority; and they accordingly set themselves industriously to forming modes of talking and writing, such as never came from tongue or pen, learned or vulgar. They are made to suffer for all this; for what really grew out of self-distrust and humility, is commonly set down to affectation and pedantry. This is the best solution we can give of the cause of Brown's style, as great a man as he was. We cannot quit Brown without one word upon the inward struggle he endured in deciding between the strong tendencies of his genius, and what he seemed half persuaded, notwithstanding his scruples, to have been his duty. He was educated for the bar, and obtained some distinction in his club for his management of the fictitious cases proposed there. We would say in passing, that we believe, after all, these clubs are not the places to determine a man's powers; and notwithstanding some eminent men first distinguished themselves in these mock contests, we have great doubts whether it is not quite as well for a man to fight his first battle on the field where nothing is allowed but keen steel and naked points. Physical and intellectual dexterity and power are very different things, and obtained by very different means. At any rate, Brown's time came, and then he hesitated, and then his friends talked, or by their marked silence pained him yet more. Unsatisfied in his own mind, and those whose good opinion he fain would have had being against him, he became harassed and dejected. There was something working within, the nature and power of which he did not then enough understand to follow without scruple. He still doubted; and when at last he did resolve, he felt not the relief and vigor of a resolved man; for he feared it might be the yielding of weakness, not the resolution of strength. It was his good fortune that the waking, instinctive energy of genius at length prevailed. Instead of living as only one of the multitude of keen and clever men at the bar, and then dying and being forgotten, he is going down with the history of our country as the earliest author of genius in our literature. Already this distinction is something; but it is to be yet greater. The writers of genius who may come up amongst us, instead of taking from his good name, will but bring to it fresh honor and reverence, for he will be called the father of all of them. Let this struggle in the sensitive temperament of Brown, be a caution to parents and friends. A little more, and he would have gone to a still earlier grave, a disappointed and scarcely noted man. If a young man's bent be a strong one, so it be innocent, point out the hardships of the course he would take, if you will, but let him follow it. The father talks of his experience, as if one man's experience would serve alike for all. We are not all made after one pattern, or this would be no longer a world of trial and effort, of great failure and glorious success. There are men, very kind men too, who would do good service to a man of genius, but then they must do it to suit themselves, not him. It is taken for granted that he is fantastic and wayward, merely because, as he differs in his intellectual powers, so does he in temperament and sympathies from the world at large. He must be made a useful citizen, however. Pegasus must be yoke-mate with donkey, or be turned out to shift for himself. Perhaps he submits; but, as every one might suppose, donkey proves the more serviceable beast, works and grows fat, while Pegasus is breaking down. Nor is this all. If the man of genius declines these well meant offers, he is sensible that he is looked upon as one who will not let you do him good if you would; and to the weight of his troubles and sorrows is added the feeling, that those who care most about him, mingle disappointment and disapprobation with their concern. This is a sad and comfortless thought to visit a mind, which, from its very nature, must dwell much alone and needs much of sympathy to take it from its solitude. There is, perhaps, no class more envied than men of genius; and it is natural enough that they should be, when estimated by their productions, and it is true, also, that they have times of high aspirations, and scenes of intellectual beauty and grandeur seen but dimly and at a distance by others; yet could the world see into their whole souls, it would hardly envy them so. It may be thought that we have dwelt too long upon the faults of Brown, and that we are of an ungracious temper for so doing. We have taken no delight in this part of our work, for we reverence his genius and feel an affection for so kind and good a man. If we speak with all our hearts of what is excellent in a great man, we shall do him little harm by pointing out his defects, while at the same time we are doing good to multitudes. We are not of those who would pull down a stone upon the head of him who is but just raising a structure for his own fame; nor of those who are glad to see the barren sands drifting over the foundation which another was beginning to lay. Brown has built up his eternal pyramid, and laid him down to rest in it. Analysis of the Principles of Rhetorical Delivery as applied to THIS work was prepared by Dr. Porter, from the perception of the want of some convenient manual of instruction in elocution, at our places of education. He observes in his Preface, that "as an instructer of theological students, my attention was many years ago called to some prevalent defects in delivery. These I ascribed chiefly to early habits, contracted in the schools, and to the want of adequate precepts in books on reading and speaking. To supply this defect and remedy the evils resulting from it, Dr. Porter conceived the plan of a work, which, aiming at the general character of Walker's treatise, should be "free from the obscurity and extreme particularity of his system.' In pursuit of this conception, the work before us has been prepared, as we think, with great success. It contains enough of the theory and principles of rhetorical delivery, to guide the teacher and to assist the student. Walker's extreme complexity is avoided; his needless multiplication of rules retrenched; and a few of his errors corrected. The first portion of the work contains the system and its illustrations; the latter portion comprehends a judicious and interesting selection of exercises, principally from the most distinguished writers of the English language, with an admixture of well chosen extracts from the popular compositions of our own time and country. We apprehend Dr. Porter's work will very sufficiently supply the previously existing want; and that it is as good an one of the kind, as need be sought after. It is no part of our object, on this occasion, to enter into a minute criticism of every principle or illustration contained in the book; with respect to which each reader must pronounce according to his own taste, ear, and judgment. The general plan of the work is excellent, and its execution exceedingly creditable. Omitting all minute remarks upon its contents, we trust the great importance of its subject will form an adequate apology for some general observations upon it.* Dr. Porter's work was prepared with the laudable purpose of furnishing a much needed aid, in the art of "speaking well;" the art, which recommended Aaron to his divine commission, and which of all human attainments (not of a moral nature) is unquestionably in this country the most important. "It is," as has been correctly observed by one of our own writers, "quite distinct from the faculty of writing well in the closet, or reading with grace and propriety." By the ancients, the art of speaking well was taught with greater application and assiduity, on the part both of master and pupil, than we can now fully realize or believe. In modern times, this is not the case. Though the uses to which public speaking is applied are as important and more numerous than they were formerly (being increased in number at least by the addition of religious exhortation from the pulpit), yet almost the only preparation habitually made by our public speakers, is professional preparation in that learning which is required by the particular line of life to be followed; some small exercise in * We would, however, make a specific criticism on the following note, on p. 72. "I beg leave to ask here, if it shows want of taste in the reader, in such a case, to sacrifice the sense to the syllabic accent of poetry, why is it, that, in the sister art of music, as applied to metrical psalmody, no practical distinction is made between aceent and emphasis? On the contrary, a choir is so trained in psalmody, as not to reflect whether one word has more meaning than another, but whether its relative position requires strong or feeble utterance. Thus a full volume of sound is poured out on a preposition, for example, just because it happens to coincide with a musical note at the beginning of a bar. Illustrations of this are so many that they may be taken almost at random. In the hymn beginning, 'God of the morning, at whose voice,' the musical accent, in many tunes would recur four times during the line, and two of these on prepositions. But is there no philosophy and rhetoric in music? Is the spirit of this divine art to be rigidly tied down by mere rules of harmony and metrical stress? Music is but an elegant and charming species of elocution. And, important as accent is, it should never contravene the laws of sentiment in the former, more than in the latter art.' The difference in the case of reading and singing we take to be this. It is the business of the reader (or speaker) to set to music in effect, as he goes along, the passage, which he speaks or reads. Consequently, if his notes are false, he is to blame; he should have composed them aright. The singer, however, is obliged generally to take a precomposed piece of music, and adapt to it any words which may chance to be given him. The necessary consequence is humorously described in an early number of the Spectator, in an account of the progress of the Italian opera in England. The unhappy effect of course never can exist in the highest order of vocal music, that is, when the original words, for which the music was composed, are sung, and no others. It ought, however, undoubtedly to be the effort of the singer, in our common church music, to accommodate the music to the words, according to Dr. Porter's suggestion. |