our complicated modern society, and are so intimately interwoven with them that they can only be expressed through their medium, and thus render necessary an element of detailed narration. Our prose fiction, while it can be wielded with a power inferior to that of the Drama only as prose is inferior to poetry, has the advantage of commanding in this more familiar domain. It is the vital offspring of modern wants and tendencies, and closely adapted by its form to meet the requirements of what is certainly in the main an elevated taste: it has reached a high pitch of excellence, remarkable however rather for the height of its general level, than for singular instances of the greatest pre-eminence. The book before us is evidently written by a lady; and one of the most prominent characteristics of the present position of this branch of Literature, is the great extent to which it has fallen into the hands of women. This circumstance has exercised a wide and penetrating influence over its tone and character. It may be doubted however whether it has been altogether favourable to its exercise, with full completeness of that highest function to which we began by alluding. To a certain extent it has in this respect narrowed its field; on the other hand it has rendered it elevated and refined in a high degree. To come to such writings as Hearts in Mortmain, and Cornelia, after the anxieties and roughness of our worldly struggle, is like bathing in fresh waters after the dust and heat of bodily exertion the spirit recovers its freshness and breathes the purer æther of a higher life, and this influence is due not so much to the selection of particular characters and incidents, as to the peculiar charm of elegance and refinement which so many Englishwomen cannot help imparting to all things they have to do with. More than this they often impart. The Spirit of undefiled religion, and the highest aspects of Christian faith and filial duty, are displayed nowhere more forcibly or more touchingly than in some of our modern novels. The books before us have this highest grace, unmarred by the slightest display or affectation, but assuming the highest things as the foundation of all life and hope, with a simplicity of faith more adverse to scepticism and distrust, than the most eloquent appeal or the subtlest reasoning. If another and yet higher : instance were needed, we would name, not with praise but with veneration, the authoress of Grantley Manor. But these qualities, which give the noblest and most valuable charm to the works of many of our Authoresses, spring from causes which limit the range of their subject-matter, and the greatness of their power as Artists. It is true that in so far as this is the case, they are something greater than Artists or Poets, and it is to be hoped that few women would be willing to purchase the power and the insight of George Sand, at the expense of her experience and her passions, but it is not the less true that an experience the most painful and most to be deprecated for a woman, could alone acquaint her with these recesses of the human heart and those different fashions in which that heart betrays itself, which a great Poet must have the power of entering and picturing to himself at will. It is a difficult question to solve, whether a man by the force of sympathy alone, and the imagination of genius, can summon up for himself the modes of the most distorted and intense operation of all the passions and instincts, so as not only to feel them for the moment, but to be vividly conscious of the manner in which they would express themselves in the particular character of which he imagines them to form a part. We will not say that this is impossible in a man, but we are convinced that it is so in a woman. Most men, even though men of genius, are to a great degree dependent on observation, not only for the food of their imaginations, the marble of their unhewn statues, but for the particular stones with which they build up the edifices of their art. Women within a certain range are less so, but when they overstep that they become far more so. Within the circle of sentiment and feeling they are completely at home; often in that of some of the passions, and here they command with freedom, power, and subtlety; but removed from ground familiar to their feet, they become dependent on external resources, and walk by sight instead of faith, with an uncertainty proportioned to their limited vision. For the sympathies and powers of the man embrace those of the woman, and though many of his sentiments and feelings are less delicate and intense they are of the same nature, and besides, those of a woman are habitually laid bare to him in life even in their most secluded manifesta tions. But there is much in a man, consisting less in particular feelings than in their modes of operation, that a woman through her sympathies can never touch, and to depict which she is driven to the results of an experience for which her habits and opportunities little fit her. If in a book the complete and faithful portrait of a woman is drawn, and a vital character unfolded through all its profound mysteries and evanescent manifestations, the work may still be that of a man; but if a man's character be so drawn, it is all but conclusive against its having a woman for its author. Jane Eyre was the writing of a woman, and this should have been betrayed to a thoughtful reader, for no man with the capacity of delineating so truthfully and with so informed a sympathy, the life-like image of the heroine, would have presented us with such harsh and defective creations as Rochester and St. John, which notwithstanding the force and graphic power displayed in them, can no more be accepted as complete men than the worn and mutilated fragments in the Elgin Gallery can be looked on as the actual forms of Greeks and heroes. It was the sort of men who were drawn in Currer Bell's books that led us astray, and the boldness with which they were described. Rochester indeed may well be in great measure the work of a woman's imagination, but the author of some of the Bell school of novels must have enjoyed more opportunities of observation among a particular set of men's characters than most women, and has certainly shown more courage than most women in availing herself of it. This difficulty with which women have to contend in dealing with much of the character of men, has sensibly affected that class of writing to which they have so much, and so successfully, devoted themselves. They have taught us to be content in our novels, to see that part only of a man's nature displayed which consists in his sentiments and the passion of love; and when so much of a man is well done, we are apt to praise the picture and think it complete. And indeed this is so much of a man, that it gives us enough to form a distinct image of him in his home, and in the society of his mistress, but only there; and we sometimes find ourselves longing to know, what sort of a man Lord William or Edmund appears in a wider field of circumstances and in his association with other men. This limitation to the display of only a portion of character is not to be confounded with the tendency of a less developed Literature to content itself with the description or delineation of particular sentiments, without caring to show them as parts of an individual. The general level of taste is above this, and the quickness which women possess in estimating character when they can touch it by their instincts, and the nicety and accuracy of their observation within its range, has preserved an individuality in all their portraits. Their men are rarely the mere mouthpieces of affections and feelings, but each of them possesses if not a complete yet a distinctive character of his own, often drawn with the happiest and acutest discrimination. The peculiarities of women's power in this and in other respects have produced a conformity to its results in many of the productions of men. The comparative ease with which some resemblance to the woman's side of a man's character may be drawn, has a tendency to make authors of many men, who while they want the fine perceptions of women have neither the knowledge, the experience, nor the insight necessary to create more than imperfect and distorted images. The absence also of thought or varied reflection in the author, which is a pardonable defect in the works of women, has made us too little sensible of the growing want of it in those of men. It is a deficiency scarcely compensated by an increased facility in the art of caricature.-There is another point in which female influence has shown itself. The delicacy and even fastidiousness of expression which is natural to educated women has got to be considered so essential, that the writing of men is in danger of being marked by a false and affected refinement, the very opposite of real delicacy. This might be borne; it is at least an error on the right side; but it is not easily tolerable to see the real inward refinement and elevation of spirit which marks the writings of English women, become a fashion before it becomes a feeling, and to find authors ornamenting their works with a japanned imitation of it, because it is sure to be a popular ingredient. How painful a medley is produced by a man who relies on great and various ability alone, to enable him to assume the tone of pure and lofty sentiment, may be seen in Sir E. L. Bulwer's novel of the Caxtons (we allude of course to those portions not attributable to Sterne).* Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, taking this sentimental and unworldly flight, arrayed in the feathers of unaffected piety, and with a tail of genuine devotion to duty tied on behind him, reminds us of that Baronet's coachman who a few years ago was persuaded to fly from the top of the stable in a pair of wings invented by his master, and who broke his leg in learning that something more than artificial pinions were necessary to be at home in so new an ele ment. The two tales which are immediately under our notice display very clearly the characteristic of feminine writing to which we have been alluding. They are simply and ably written, and entitled to a high place in their class. To a peculiar and attractive grace they join considerable dramatic power, and one or two of the characters are conceived and executed with real genius. It is worthy of remark too, and promising for future effort, that with perhaps one exception the most prominent characters in each story, and those with which the greatest pains have been taken, are those which are the most successfully and ably drawn. These however are the characters of women, and the men for the most part are to a certain extent shadows and incomplete; and if one or two features be brought prominently forward and forcibly expressed, still the whole like a dark lanthorn shines only on one side. Yet if some of the portraits have the necessary incompleteness of a woman's handling, the whole book is marked with her peculiar excellences in their highest form, and is undefaced by carelessness or any strained effort after display. Not its least charm is a certain happy temperament which pervades it throughout. All books have an atmosphere of their own, a certain inexplicable influence-arising from the spirit in which they were composed. Some exhale mephitic vapours, others an intoxicating gas. It is the carbonic acid emanating from them that makes us go so dead asleep over some books, and the oxygen in others, which hurries the animal spirits and fans the vital flame; a few live in a clear *This work appears to be the joint production of Sir E. L. Bulwer and the younger Mr. Shandy. The latter gentleman has contributed some valuable hints from his own memoirs, which he published in a desultory form some years ago. |