Part 17 (1/2)
ANNE RADCLIFFE.
[BORN 1764. DIED 1823.]
EDINBURGH REVIEW.
Born in 1764, died in 1823, this lady was as truly an inventor, a great and original writer in the department she had struck out for herself--whether that department was of the highest kind or not--as the Richardsons, Fieldings, or Smolletts whom she succeeded, and for a time threw into the shade; or the Ariosto of the North, before whom her own star has paled its ineffectual fires. The pa.s.sion of fear, ”the latent sense of supernatural awe and curiosity concerning whatever is hidden and mysterious”--these were themes and sources of interest which, prior to the appearance of her tales, could scarcely be said to have been touched upon. The ”Castle of Otranto” was too obviously a mere caprice of imagination; its gigantic helmets, its pictures descending from their frames, its spectral figures dilating themselves in the moonlight to the height of the castle battlements,--if they did not border on the ludicrous, no more impressed the mind with any feeling of awe than the enchantments and talismans, the genii and peris, of the ”Arabian Nights.”
A nearer approach to the proper tone of feeling was made in the ”Old English Baron;” but while it must be admitted that Mrs Radcliffe's principle of composition was to a certain degree antic.i.p.ated in that clever production, nothing can ill.u.s.trate more strongly the superiority of her powers, the more poetical character of her mind, than a comparison of the way in which in her different works the principle is wrought out; the comparative boldness and rudeness of Clara Reeves' mode of exciting superst.i.tious emotions as contrasted with the profound art, the multiplied resources, the dexterous display and concealment, the careful study of that cla.s.s of emotions on which she was to operate, which Mrs Radcliffe displays in her supernatural machinery. Certainly never before or since did any one more accurately perceive the point to which imagination might be wrought up by a series of hints, glimpses, or half-heard sounds, consistently at the same time with pleasurable emotion, and with the continuance of that very state of curiosity and awe which had been thus excited. The clang of a distant door, a footfall on the stair, a half-effaced stain of blood, a stream of music floating over a wood or round some decaying chateau--nay, a very ”rat behind the arras,”--become, in her hands, invested with a mysterious dignity; so finely has the mind been attuned to sympathise with the terrors of the sufferer by a train of minute details and artful contrasts, in which all sights and sounds combine to awaken and render the feeling more intense.
Yet her art is more visible in what she conceals than in what she displays. ”One shade the more, one ray the less,” would have left the picture in darkness; but to have let in any farther the garish light of day upon her mysteries, would have shown at once the hollowness and meanness of the puppet which alarmed us, and have broken the spell beyond the power of reclasping it. Hence, up to the moment when she chooses to do so herself by those fatal explanations, for which no reader will ever forgive her, she never loses her hold on the mind. The very economy with which she avails herself of the talisman of terror preserves its power to the last undiminished, if not increased. She merely hints at some fearful thought, and leaves the excited fancy surrounded by night and silence to give it colour and form.
Of all the pa.s.sions, that of fear is the only one which Mrs Radcliffe can be properly said to have painted. More wearisome beings than her heroines, and anything ”more tolerable and not to be endured” than her love tales, Calprenede or Scuderi never invented. As little have the sterner pa.s.sions of jealousy or hatred, or the dark shades of envious and malignant feeling, formed the subjects of her a.n.a.lysis. Within the circle of these pa.s.sions, indeed, she did not feel that she could walk with security; but her quick perception showed where there was still an opening in a region of obscurity and twilight as yet all but untrodden.
To that, as to the sphere pointed out to her by nature, she at once addressed herself; from that, as from a central point, she surveyed the provinces of pa.s.sion and imagination, and was content if, without venturing into their labyrinths, she could render their leading and more palpable features available to set off and to brighten, by their variety, the solemnity and gloom of the department which she had chosen.
MISS EDGEWORTH.
[BORN 1767. DIED 1849.]
JEFFREY.
Miss Edgeworth is the great modern mistress in the useful school of true philosophy, and has eclipsed, we think, the fame of all her predecessors. By her many excellent tracts on education, she has conferred a benefit on the whole ma.s.s of the population, and discharged, with exemplary patience as well as extraordinary judgment, a task which superficial spirits may perhaps mistake for an humble and easy one. By her popular tales, she has rendered an invaluable service to the middling and lower cla.s.ses of the people; and, by her novels, has made a great and meritorious effort to promote the happiness and respectability of the higher cla.s.ses.
There are two great sources of unhappiness to those whom fortune and nature seem to have placed above the reach of ordinary miseries. The one is _ennui_, that stagnation of life and feeling which results from the absence of all motives to exertion, and by which the justice of Providence has so fully compensated the partiality of fortune, that it may be fairly doubted whether upon the whole the race of beggars is not happier than the race of lords, and whether those vulgar wants that are sometimes so importunate are not in this world the chief ministers of enjoyment. This is a plague that infects all indolent persons that can live on in the rank in which they were born, without the necessity of working; but in a free country it rarely occurs in any great degree of virulence, except among those who are already at the summit of human felicity. Below this there is room for ambition, and envy, and emulation, and all the feverish movements of aspiring vanity and unresisting selfishness, which act as prophylactics against this more dark and deadly distemper. It is the canker which corrodes the full-blown flower of human felicity--the pestilence which smites at the bright hour of noon.
The other curse of the happy has a range more wide and indiscriminate.
It, too, tortures only the comparatively rich and fortunate, but is most active among the least distinguished, and abates in malignity as we ascend to the lofty regions of pure _ennui_. This is the desire of being fas.h.i.+onable, the restless and insatiable pa.s.sion to pa.s.s for creatures a little more distinguished than we really are, with the mortification of frequent failure, and the humiliating consciousness of being perpetually exposed to it. Among those who are secure of ”meat, clothes, and fire,”
and are thus above the chief evils of existence, we do believe that this is a more prolific source of unhappiness than guilt, disease, or wounded affection; and that more positive misery is created, and more true enjoyment excluded, by the eternal fretting and straining of this pitiful ambition, than by all the ravages of pa.s.sion, the desolations of war, or the accidents of mortality. This may appear a strong statement, but we make it deliberately, and are deeply convinced of its truth. The wretchedness which it produces may not be so intense, but it is of much longer duration, and spreads over a far wider circle. It is quite dreadful indeed to think what a sweep this pest has taken among the comforts of our prosperous population. To be thought fas.h.i.+onable--that is, to be thought more opulent and tasteful, and on a footing of intimacy with a greater number of distinguished persons than they really are,--is the great and laborious pursuit of four families out of five, the members of which are exempted from the necessity of daily industry.
These are the giant curses of fas.h.i.+onable life; and Miss Edgeworth has accordingly dedicated her two best tales to the delineation of their symptoms. The history of Lord Glenthorn is a fine picture of _ennui_; that of Almeria, an instructive representation of the miseries of aspirations after fas.h.i.+on. The moral use of these narratives, therefore, must consist in warning us against the first approaches of evils which can never afterwards be resisted. To some readers her tales may seem to want the fairy colouring of high fancy and romantic tenderness; and it is very true that they are not poetical love tales, any more than they are anecdotes of scandal. We have great respect for the admirers of Rousseau and Petrarca, and we have no doubt that Miss Edgeworth has great respect for them; but _the world_, both high and low, which she is labouring to mend, have no sympathy with this respect. They laugh at these things, and do not understand them; and, therefore, the solid sense which she possesses presses perhaps rather too closely upon them, and, though it permits of relief from wit and direct pathos, really could not be combined with the more luxuriant ornaments of an ardent and tender imagination.
CHARLOTTE CORDAY.
[BORN 1768. DIED 1793.]
CARLYLE.
Amid which dim ferment of Caen and the world, history specially notices one thing. In the lobby of the Mansion de l'Intendance, where busy deputies are coming and going, a young lady, with an aged valet, taking grave, graceful leave of Deputy Barbaroux. She is of stately Norman figure, in her twenty-fifth year, of beautiful still countenance; her name is Charlotte Corday, heretofore styled D'Armans, while n.o.bility still was. Barbaroux has given her a note to Deputy Duperret, him who once drew his sword in the effervescence. Apparently, she will to Paris on some errand. ”She was a republican before the Revolution, and never wanted energy.” A completeness, a decision is in this fair figure: ”by energy she means the spirit that will prompt one to sacrifice himself for his country.” What if she, this fair young Charlotte, had emerged from her secluded stillness suddenly like a star; to gleam for a moment, and in a moment to be extinguished; to be held in memory, so bright complete was she, through long centuries! Quitting Cimmerian coalitions without, and the dim-simmering twenty-five millions within, history will look fixedly at this one fair apparition of a Charlotte Corday; will note whither Charlotte moves, how the little life burns forth so radiant, then vanishes, swallowed of the night.
With Barbaroux's note of introduction, and slight stock of luggage, we see Charlotte on Tuesday, the 9th of July, seated in the Caen diligence, with a place for Paris. None takes farewell of her, wishes her good journey; her father will find a line left, signifying that she is gone to England, that he must pardon her and forget her. The drowsy diligence lumbers along, amid drowsy talk of politics and praise of the Mountain, in which she mingles not; all night, all day, and again all night. On Thursday, not long before noon, we are at the bridge of Neuilly. Here is Paris, with her thousand black domes--the goal and purpose of thy journey! Arrived at the Inn de la Providence, in the Rue des Vieux Augustins, Charlotte demands a room, hastens to bed, sleeps all afternoon and night, till the morrow morning.
On the morrow morning she delivers her note to Duperret. It relates to certain family papers which are in the Minister of the Interior's hands, which a nun at Caen, an old convent-friend of Charlotte's, has need of, which Duperret shall a.s.sist her in getting: this, then, was Charlotte's errand to Paris? She has finished this in the course of Friday, yet says nothing of returning. She has seen and silently investigated several things. The Convention, in bodily reality, she has seen; what the Mountain is like. The living physiognomy of Marat she could not see; he is sick at present, and confined to home.
About eight o'clock on the Sat.u.r.day morning she purchases a large sheath-knife in the Palais-Royal; then straightway, in the Place de Victoires, takes a hackney-coach. ”To the Rue de l'Ecole de Medicine, No. 44.” It is the residence of the Citoyen Marat! The Citoyen Marat is ill, and cannot be seen, which seems to disappoint her much. Her business is with Marat, then? Hapless, beautiful Charlotte--hapless, squalid Marat! From Caen in the utmost west, from Neuchatel in the utmost east, they two are drawing nigh each other; they two have, very strangely, business together. Charlotte returning to her inn, despatches a short note to Marat, signifying that she is from Caen; that she desires earnestly to see him, and ”will put it in his power to do France a great service.” No answer. Charlotte writes another note, still more pressing; sets out with it by coach, about seven in the evening, herself.