The Tell-Tale Heart - The Pioneer, January 1843 — reading text

isamember. If not a highly poetical book, it is at to this, our first postulate is that it do not stand upon least a very interesting one on a highly poetical sub- its apex. So is it of poetry and philosophy; poetry ject. is the plant, philosophy is the soil which feeds its roots, and we do not take the safest method of insur- Tue Satem Bette: A Tate or 1692. Boston: ing the growth of the one by heaping it wholly over Tappan & Dennett. 16mo. pages 238. with the other.* The book before us contains many beautiful and even poetical passages, but it might be This little novel is, we are informed, the production more fitly called a dictionary of correspondences in of a young merchant of this city, whose first attempt eneeda gli AST oom he. =. verse, than a poem. The feeling manifested in it has in the art of book-making it appears to be. It is dis- sometimes reminded us of Very’s sonnets, but it is figured by several strange anachronisms, not the not of so wide and generous a scope, and is rather least remarkable of which, are the introduction of pietistic than pious. lightning conductors some twenty or thirty years prior We copy one or two of the passages which most te the birth of Franklin, and of a Virginian negro pleased us in the first part of the book, — for we must slave, who, nearly a century before the Declaration of confess that we have not yet read it through, it being American Independence, “ professed to be a thorough almost too cataloguish (if we may use so harsh a democrat, and insisted that all men were born free term) for continous reading. and equal.” These, however, do not probably mar the interest of the book to the general reader. “ Nature is not untongued with accents meek, The story is one of love, and is pleasingly told. What time, escaping from the unseasoned mirth The main interest turns upon the famous witchcraft Of this world’s drunkards, he in sadness roams cae: some lonelier path ; about are strewed delusion of 1692, and the danger incurred by the hero- Gentle forget-me-nots to call to mind ine, who becomes involved in the persecution levelled The countless spirits who may interpose at every one suspected of dealing in the black art, In his behalf and claim return of love: and is rescued by her lover, and carried off to Virgin- The wild rose breathes its fragrancy abroad ia, on the day previous to that appointed for her death As if ’t was made to cheer him, and the bell That bends its head beneath the hawthorn rows on the scaffold. Hath semblance of a brotherhood with him Who under sorrows kneels in hidden prayer. Tue Career or Purrer Hopkins. By Cornelius In everything is nature, like a home Mathews. Author of the Motiey Book, &c. New Fraught with the offices of sister’s ready love.” York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 319 pages. In the following, the death of a botanical friend is The author of this book is a resident, and we be- alluded to. lieve anative, of the city of New York. He is a member of the legal profession, and is still quite * Jilies grew young, though his name has been for some years on Within the room of one I dearly loved, And dearly love with freshness unimpared the list of our prominent authors. His first publica- By winter's outward air. For friends are friends, tion was the Motley Book, which was issued in num- And friendship is a habit of the soul bers in 1838, and of which three editions have since Which death with flimsy veil may intercept been disposed of. In the succeeding year appeared Be- So only as to make it energise hemoth, a Legend of the Mound Builders, a story, or rather a prose poem, the scenes and characters of * Sir James Mackintosh, in his History of Ethical Philosophy, says that men too often forget the distinc- which were drawn from the ancient and extinct in- tion between philosophical poetry and versified philo- habitants of the Mississippi Valley. In 1841-2, sophy. Mr. Mathews in conjunction with Mr. Evert A.  : : ~~ fo oeiEre LITERARY NOTICES. 45 Duyckinck commenced the publication of Arcturus, a ment and its operations, and philosophical conjecture Journal of Books and Opinions, which was continued as to its ultimate tendencies and results. But we for two years with eminent ability, if not with great could not rightly expect from Mr. Dickens anything success. In its pages, Wakondah, a poem by Mr. more than the necessarily cursory observations of one Mathews, first appeared, which has since been issued who has shown himself to be the keenest and shrewd- in a separate and very beautiful form. est observer of his time. During the past year, Mr. Mathews has been chiefly To judge from the tone of a large share of the engaged in ardently and ably advocating the passage criticisms on this lively jeu d’esprit, (for such it may of an international copyright law. His services in be rightly called,) it would seem that our people this great cause will long be remembered with grati- imagined that, because they had admired Mr. Dick- tude by all who have at heart the welfare of American ens’s other works, he had no right to do anything literature. but admire everything of theirs in turn. The Ame- ee Puffer Hopkins was commenced in Arcturus, and ricans are the only nation who appear to think that was unfinished when that periodical closed its exist- they can say what they please of others, and that ence. It is now offered to the public, completed, and others have no right to say what they please of them. in two different forms. The Brother Jonathan has Mr. Dickens’s remarks on slavery seem to have issued the largest and more popular edition of the raised the greatest storm of indignation, and yet the work in one of its extras, and Appleton and Co. have greatest part of his chapter on this system, which published another edition of the same in the usual (call it crime or misfortune,) is surely the darkest book form, with several embellishments by an English blot on our national character, consisted only of artist. quotations from our own newspapers. If the eyes Of the merits of the work we have not room to and mouths of our own countrymen are to be for speak otherwise than very generally. The story is ever sealed on a question which more nearly con- interesting and pathetic, but somewhat involved and cerns their interest and honor than any other, they obscure, and interrupted by scenes and incidents should thank God for what little light they are per- which in no way assist in arriving at the con- mitted to gain from an intelligent foreigner, whose clusion. The characters are in general vigorously vivid exposure of the abuses of his own system of o and acutely delineated, though if some of them are government give him the better right to strike at ee ee =- correct representations of the personages who parade those of our own. A man of genius, like Dickens, is the streets and frequent the garrets and oyster-houses a citizen of the world, and belongs as much to Ame- of the commercial metropolis, we feel inclined to think rica as to England. If our narrowness and cow- that our good city of Boston is blessed or cursed, as ardice in this matter are not outgrown, we might as the case may be, with a very provincial monotony in well publish expurgated editions of Shakspeare, and respect to population. all others who satirize and revolt at tyranny, (as all — The style of Mr. Mathews reminds us constantly of great minds must,) —nay, of the Declaration of Inde- that of Dickens, by its frequent, unexpected and quaint pendence itself. |e sa turns of humor, and by the genial love for, and sym- The greatest and deepest fault we have to find pathy with nature and humanity that glows through- with the book is the too frequent eulogy of brandy out his pages. He has evidently, however, a more and water, and ill-concealed satire of the temperance —:=-- scholastic mind than the author of Oliver Twist, and reform —a reform which has been and is doing in- inclines rather more to the sarcastic and the melan- calculable good throughout the land; which is spread- PD choly.