SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER. PUBLISHED MONTHLY AT THREE DOLLARS PER ANNUM-JNO. R. THOMPSON, EDITOR. VOL. XIX. RICHMOND, MAY, 1853. MR. CAXTON'S REVIEW OF "MY NOVEL." NO. 5. his genius that deficit in the annual revenues of the family estate, occasioned by the abrogation of the Corn Laws. The pleasant companion of two years, the winning instructor is now silent, and we are left to profit by his 'Yea, my father did preach unto them.' precepts-and mourn the intermission or cesSo writeth Nephi the son of Lehi, in the sec-sation of his sermons. ond chapter of the First Book of Nephi, as If Mr. Caxton, Senior, after presiding over preserved in the celebrated gold plates trans- the appendix which closes this Epopee, like lated by Joseph Smith, Jr., and known as the concluding chorus of an Eschylean TragThe Book of Mormon. So too might write edy, had recalled his thoughts from the satPisistratus Caxton, Esq., of his own less isfaction occasioned by the successful accomshadowy progenitor. Yea, verily the ven-plishment of his son's task, and the almost erable Austin Caxton did preach to the sup- equally grateful contemplation of the repair posed compounder of this most attractive of his son's revenues, to estimate the merits novel, to the family circle which clustered and the defects of the production, to which round its cradle, and anxiously watched its he had stood as sponsor or endorser-nay, development and growth, and, like the Greek monitor rather, at the different stages of its Chorus, to which the Initial Chapters are as- progress, we should have listened to his versimilated, he preached and preaches to every dict and its reasons with infinitely greater one that will listen, to every one that will pleasure than we can expect to afford to any read. But such delicious preaching as his it by our harsher, drier, and less welcome critis rarely our good fortune to meet with; such icism. If he called his family together round kindly insight into human motives, such gen- the old-fashioned tea-table, or round the doerous charity for human frailties, such keen mestic hearth, to listen to his last words, ere satire for vice, such genuine enthusiasm for his son's bantling was severed for ever from virtue, such inspiring encouragement to lofty his sagacious admonitions, we might have thoughts and noble actions, such delicate but been silent-though it is not easy to stop the merciless exposure of meanness and iniquity, pen of one infected with the itch of scribare not often combined in modern sermons, bling. We can picture to ourselves the asand need not be sought at any rate in the pect of the little household at this critical Book of Mormon. Delightful as 'My Novel' juncture-the faces of all of them lit up with is throughout, the most charming parts are a smile but mingled with such other diversithose Initial Chapters in which Austin Cax- ties of expression,-Pisistratus, with his arms ton pours out his genial but pedantic wisdom, folded, leaning back in his chair, and casting and leads us in the ways of pleasantness and furtive glances of pride on the group around peace, scattering flowers over the path at him-but every now and then inviting a pout every step that he takes. To these we looked to his lips and pishing in his heart, as he forward in the perusal of these volumes with thinks of the unreasonable and misplaced unfading interest, and to them we now look severity of his father, in bringing up his back with melancholy but grateful regret, Novel' to judgment, after its destiny is setsad to think that the music of the old man's tled for weal or for woe, and its triumph eloquent tongue is hushed, now that his dear fondly believed to be completely assured: anachronism has supplied by the labours of MY NOVEL; OR VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. By Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, Author of The Caxtons,' &c. VOL. XIX-33 Blanche, with her hands clasped on the shoulder of her husband, half amused as she thinks of the impending criticism, half distressed as she notices her lord's annoyance: the good humoured grandmother has laid down Fortunio's, into which you have only to put the baby frock, and taken up the baby, which your hand, and draw forth what coin you ought to have been in bed long ago, and she may desire. It fails not, neither does it endeavours to hush its cries that it may not shrink. Mr. Squills' Railway Shares, his disturb the awful solemnity of the meditated preferred bonds, his multifarious investments, address. Uncle Roland is a little uneasy, rise and fall in the market-to-day the merbut he sits bolt upright in his chair with mil- cury is at boiling point, to-morrow below itary precision, resigns himself to his fate, zero: and they fluctuate so amongst thembut thinks that too much has been said about selves that he can never tell the temperaMy Novel' already. Mr. Squills, for the ture of his blood by feeling his pulse"good man could not be spared from this last MR. SQUILLS. "Pulse-pulse, Sir: quite family re-union-Mr. Squills twitches his regular, smooth, even, not too full—natural hands and fingers the caps of his knees, heat-blood heat. I don't know what you thinking about the craniological bumps of mean, Sir!" every one but himself; but there is the spar- MR. CAXTON, (not heeding the interrupkle of vivacity in his eyes as he remembers tion.) "But you have found the veins of how railway shares have gone up since 'My true gold, which are never exhausted. You Novel' was commenced. Oh! for Uncle have grasped Australia and California, and Jack at this last hour, but he is far away in encompassed them round with your own ap Australia, searching for gold, and meditating prehension. Nor have you merely seized a grand combined anti-monopoly gold col- the Golden Lands, but you have brought back lecting and refining Joint Stock Company- the Golden Age to gladden them-you have shares moderate, profits a few thousand per appropriated the saffron bag. You eat with cent. Over all the family there is obviously contentment, you lie down in happiness and an air of constraint; Mr. Caxton himself hope. If the rust takes your wheat, or the being the only person perfectly at his ease. barley is beat down by rains-the farmer's He has been gathering from a huge pile of afflictions, which the Venusian Poet has cumbrous and antiquated books some new sung-in the midst of the distresses and the illustrations to add to his History of Human sullenness of others, you have only to stretch Error; and, as he closes the last folio over forth your hand again, and pluck another which he had been poring for the half-hour bough from the golden tree to guide you past, and sees that his little audience are all through the gloom. It is the oracle of the assembled, there is a good-humored sparkle Cumaan Sibyl-whose name and attributes, in his eye and a pleasant irony in the play of as you well know, indicate the advice of Juhis lip, as he thus begins: piter: -primo avulso, non deficit alter Aureus et simili frondescit virga metallo, success of your first novel, ensures a golden crop for all that you may pluck in future from the parent tree." MR. CAXTON. "My son, Pisistratus, you have done well-although you might have done better, no doubt. But how far preferable these labours of the mind, which have which, being interpreted, meaneth, that the kindled your feelings, interested your whole household, even down to the baby who proclaims your success in its newer and gaudier dress, and filled your pockets-how much Blanche looks pleased, she scarcely knows more grateful, aye, and useful too, this oc- why, but with woman's instinct feels that cupation of your leisure hours, than the moan- there is something in the old gentleman's ing and grumbling, and repining with which language to be pleased at: Pisistratus smiles, you vainly regretted the gloomy aspect of then knits his brows, and appears perplexthe times. A change in the direction of ed :-and asks, "Pray, Sir, what has all your thoughts, a diversion of your energies this to do with the criticism of 'My Novel,' into new channels has brought back hope to for which I thought you had summoned us.” your bosom, and sunshine to the world. You MR. CAXTON. "Festina lente': a quick care but little now for corn laws and crops. hound will often overrun the scent. You You have found a magic purse, like that of may yet discover the true bearing of this preamble, for its detection will need no De- and honours. From Leonard Fairfield up to lian diver, as the scholiast David tells us Lord L'Estrange, and Riccabocca, the crownwas said to be requisite for the comprehen- ing triumphs which you assign to a wellsion of the philosophumena, or philosophical spent life are merely worldly advantages. positions of that dry but weeping sage, He- Even Parson Dale plays for his winnings at raclitus. You have shown, in the accom- whist. And the castigation which you replishment of Your Novel,' not mine, my serve for the guilty is the rod stripped of its son, that change gives contentment, mental golden leaves. Leonard Fairfield grasps the health, and renewed energy-so true is the glittering branch twined with laurel, Randal vulgar proverb, which seems but a theft from Leslie, the bare twig. Homer tells us," and the Orestes of Euripides; that variety is here Mr. Caxton elevated both his head and the spice of life.' But besides furnishing his voice," that the heathen Jupiter had two your life with the seasoning, it has materi- huge urns standing by his side, from the one ally augmented its instruments, and given of which he dispensed blessings to the sons you a surer string to your bow than your of men, and out of the other the multitudicrops, and one less objectionable than any of nous variety of curses: but you, my son, those employed by that enigmatical Panurge, have only a huge money bag, an ideal amwho is reported by Rabelais or Alcofribas plification of that which you anticipated as Nasier, as he delighted to call himself, to the prize of your own labours, out of which have had three hundred and sixty-five modes you pay liberally the current coin of a shaof making money, the most honest of which dowy world to your faithful servants, and was by way of petty larceny." UNCLE ROLAND. "He should have been sent to the gallows, if I had the execution of the laws." bitterly refuse payment to that keen but unlucky knave on whom all the vials of your wrath are concentrated. This is hardly a true or Christian view of that world of men, "To Botany Bay," said Mr. Squills, who whose heavenly ruler sends down his rains was thinking of Uncle Jack. Shocking," cried my Mother. on the just and the unjust. Would you recognize the canon, which, at least in the case of Baron Levy you explicitly disclaim, that worldly success and pecuniary emoluments are the sole or the principal prizes offered MR. CAXTON. "Euphemeite! Favete lin- for rectitude, or the test of a well-spent life? guis!' restrain your tongues; or you will dis- You have experienced yourself the contentturb Camarina, which I have no design to ment which springs from well-directed enerdo. But while replenishing your own wan-gies, independent of the gain: is it not a noing treasury, my dear anachronism, you have bler enjoyment-and a nobler lesson to teach fixed your thoughts so intently on your own that the recompense of virtue is derived from profits, that you have carried the same spirit the virtuous mind and the rapture of virtuinto the whole tenor of your novel. We see ous action, in the midst of all the stings the beauties of nature less by the golden ra- and arrows of outrageous fortune'—and withdiance of the sun than by the illumination out regard to the larger distribution of worldly of our own minds: we interpret the wonder- honour and pecuniary gains to the vicious, ful varieties of life less by the light of know- the scheming and the ignoble? Do you picture ledge which pours in from without, than by to yourself the pure man and the one of unshathe light of sentiment which streams out ken constancy in right- Integer ritæ scelerisfrom within: que purus,' or 'Equum tenacis propositi virum'-would you represent either of these There's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. as gaining an income of ten thousand pounds Thus, you have taken the anticipated mea- a year, or a ducal title, with unbounded revsure of your own success, as the type of enues, as the results of his virtues? You that cornucopia from which you scatter re- destroy the temper and the spring of integwards to your favorite actors. They all grow rity-you eradicate the only efficacious inrich, and acquire worldly distinction, power, ducements to unfaltering virtue, when you substitute these glittering baubles for the instructions are often spoken of, but whose abundant treasures which flow spontaneously poetical merits are less remembered: from the confidence of right. Moreover, amid all the Varieties of English or other Corporis et causa pascendi. Life, the example, real or ideal, which is most This is from Priscian's Panegyric of the Emneeded in this age, is the career of one who peror Anastasius, and was probably suggestis contented with poverty, who cultivates his ed by the well known line moral affections and the love of right with no ulterior aims but to do his duty to God, Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas. his neighbour and himself, and who strength- It is true, that, in like manner, the Preacher ens and enriches his intellect but for the bet- saith All a man's labour is for his mouth,' ter service of noble intentions, and the lar- but if you expended your own labour in ger contemplation of God and his wondrous providing for your mouth, and our mouths works. In that picture of the domestic life too we will take care to remember, you might and fortunes of the Caxton Family, which have permitted the puppets, which were has been published by some skilful and in- moved by wires held in your own hand, to veterate scribbler, and in which the privacy act in such a way that they might tempt our of the Lares and Penates of the Caxtons thoughts to a loftier sphere." has been betrayed to the curious gaze of the PISISTRATUS. "But, Sir, have not your public, justice has scarcely been done to the own quotations furnished my defence already. lofty and unselfish motives by which you Solomon, and Priscian, and Virgil, seem a were tempted to your Australian exile-(if strong array of defenders: and are we not you had remained longer you might have told in the writings of St. Paul that the been corrupted by the prevalent taste for love of money is the root of all evil?'" gold-auri sacra fames,)—and I myself have MR. CAXTON. "Unquestionably, and I been grievously caricatured, though that mat- complain that it is the root of the evil here. ters little as the duck and the carp take their It is that this love of money is made the food from my hands as before. But I was main-spring of both the good and the bad going to say, that in your temporary migra- actions represented, and that the reward and tion to the antipodes, the motive, by which the punishment are both addressed excluyou were governed, was the desire of min- sively to this lust of gain. But the thesis istering to the comforts and happiness of you attribute to St. Paul, however sanctioned your family, not the mere design of acqui- by his adoption, is a quotation from the Greek ring fortune for yourself. A memorable con- Poets, like so many other remarks of his, for temporary has so keenly felt the selfish, St. Paul was both scholar and gentleman. greedy, avaricious temper of the times, that he has made the maxim 'to live for others,' Vivre pour autrui,' the motto of his philosophy-and though he loses himself in the devious labyrinths of an imagination at once credulous and sceptical, and adds a notable instance of enlightened delusion, to which I must not forget to devote a long chapter in my History of Human Error, he might at And here, let me say, that I do not feel highly least have warned you that the particular complimented by your acknowledgment of variety required amid all the Varieties of mod- my assistance in getting up your secondern life is the example of one who does not hand learning-assistance which would never possess, and rises superior to the objects of have been granted if I had thought that it worldly temptation. The inspiration of the would have been exposed to bring your falarge majority of your actors might, by giv- ther's gray hairs into derision-and which I ing a liberal extension to the meaning, be suspect you plundered for yourself princialmost summed up in a line from a writer in pally from my notes and the margins of my the bad age of Justinian, whose grammatical books, without understanding the bearing or This is a verse from Phocylides: you may find the sentiment in Longinus: it is even mingled by Claudian with his praises of Stelicho. Ac primam scelerum matrem, quæ, semper habendo the value of the treasures you stole. Our chinery turns on worldly honours and pecusons are sad dogs in this age, Pisistratus : niary considerations. But the springs of hudo you think I would be guilty of such su- man action are now almost reduced to these perficial scholarship, when I wished to give alone, and I proposed to depict men as they my learning an airing, like the dandy lawyer were, to give an outline of the actual varieat Rome displaying his amethyst ring-(you ties of English life, not to draw them as may read the story in Juvenal)-do you they ought to be, or to paint an ideal Elysithink I would blunder like you, and give only um. I leave that amusing recreation to Comthe inferior examples omitting the superior munists, and Socialists, and Owenites, and and most important? I much suspect there Chartists; I have nothing to do with phais pedantry in such cheap, inaccurate, sec- lanxes, and parallelograms, and Icarias, exond hand learning as runs through your cept to shun, distrust and abhor them." Novel, and that pedantry you would attri- MR. SQUILLS. 66 Well said! Pisistratus! bute to me. Proh Pudor! Pisistratus, such and I believe you are right. Your father is superficial erudition it would not become my not satisfied to take things as they are, and sense of propriety to display and its parade look at their bright side; but he wants somewould shock my modesty." thing better, which shall have a new side of "For all his own gilding. He forgets that the protuthe world, brother Austin, I see no differ- berances in Randal Leslie's head, and the ence between the Greek, and Latin, and craniological developments in the skulls of all Spanish, and German tags of learning and the others, prevented"your own. They all sound alike and are equally unintelligible to me." UNCLE ROLAND, (seriously.) MRS. CAXTON. 'Indeed, Mr. Caxton, Pisistratus did his best, I suppose." MR. CAXTON. "Distingue. Discrimination should precede judgment. You are welcome to employ any machinery and suppose any motives you please; but observe BLANCHE. "The musty, fusty old things. that the manner in which the plot of this I wonder they cannot let the dead languages novel has been managed leaves behind the lie still in their graves. There's no sense in impression that there is some natural affinithem any how. I can never make out what ty, some appropriate attraction between virpeople mean when they quote Latin and tuous action and worldly success. La BruGreek. And it's so unsocial. But there yère says a book must be estimated by the must be something fine in them which I feeling it leaves behind; now, your Novel, can't see, or Pisistratus would not use them- leaves behind the uneasy feeling that wealth perhaps he only does, to please his father." and distinction are the suitable if not the PISISTRATUS, (who had paid no attention sufficient rewards of integrity. It is not the to the later remarks of his father or to this plot which need be altered, but the spirit in by-play.) "I do not think that the motives which the plot is conceived and executed. of the actors turn exclusively on the desire To my mind, the Italian exile is a nobler of gain, though much of the machinery does. spectacle as the poor Dr. Riccabocca, shrewdIt was not gain that tempted Egerton to be- ly suspected of being a mountebank by Mr. tray his friend and marry Nora Avenel: it Hazeldean, in the Casino, with his cherished was not gain that led Leonard Fairfield to child and faithful Giacomo, than the Prince London and made him abandon his Uncle's di Monteleone and Duca di Serrano, with house, or remain faithful to Helen Digby: it the largest heritage of an Italian noble. And was the very reverse of any such greed that Leonard Fairfield is more worthy of our resthrew Helen into Leonard's arms; it was not pect at the village school, struggling against the hope of money that attracted Harley difficulties, than as the acknowledged son of L'Estrange to Violante, or Violante to Har- the Right Hon. Audley Egerton. ley that inspired the generous magnanimity of Riccabocca to a detestable traitor; that Stemmata quid faciunt? regulated the conduct of Mr. Hazeldean, or Shall fiction present us with no characters his son Frank: or sustained the generosity worthy of admiration, no reflection of heavof Egerton to Randal Leslie. True, the ma-enly glories, but they must straightway be |