apt to believe good of others. This is not the first of your gambling adventures. Excuse me, if I am too free; I fear you are a dangerous acquaintance.' "I was not acquainted with Mr. Vaughan, Sir.' But you now are. You live clerk with Mr. Hazard?' "I am in the house, Sir.' "Then you are a servant. Have you considered the consequence of a breach of trust, Mr. Perdue?' "Sir! I have not committed one.' "You are surprised, and so am I.' "At what, Sir? "Your want of reflection. Are you not aware that the receiver is as bad as I would neither shock nor offend, but, I am obliged to repeat, you are a dangerous acquaintance, Mr. Perdue, and I think it a duty to give my nephew this warning. He loves the virtue which you discover, occasionally, and so do I, more it may be than you suppose; yet I am led to doubt whether it does not make you the more dangerous: for, were you a confirmed vicious character, you would be excluded the society of the virtuous, whom you would have no opportunity to seduce.' "Sir-pardon me-I did not expect-' dom?" You, Sir, are the uncle of Mr. Henry Fairman, whom I esteem very highly.' "He is highly deserving of esteem. My duty requires me to proceed. Have you considered the numerous ties of man to man, which necessarily must be observed, or the world would first become a universal scene of confusion, plunder, and assassination, and at Jast a desert?' "I am young, Sir.' "Then, being young, suffer me to call to your memory facts, that deserve your serious attention. You desire to be at all times in perfect safety: you wish to sleep, eat, walk the streets, and perform every function of life, transact every affair, of business or of pleasure, in this said perfect safety-do you not?" "Certainly, that, Sir, is the desire of every man.' "In this vast, multitudinous, mercantile city, where such a prodigious exchange of money and effects is daily taking place, and so many hundred thousand pounds are transmitted from hand to hand by persons intrusted, by public officers, merchants' and bankers' clerks, nay by poor and common porters, it being not possible for the owners themselves to do all this, what safety, what general sense of repose can there be, for this heterogeneous swarming multitude, but that one thing, on which we all depend, you, I, our friends, our wives, our children, what but honesty? Sir, the discovery of a dishonest man is a public misfortune; for the tendency of his actions is a tendency to anarchy and destruction.' "This is very true, Sir.' "But not to the purpose, you think. With respect to the money you offer to pay, I am not authorized to receive it: you and I have had no dealings together, I have given you no value, and you, a thoughtless young man, are not aware of the responsibility of such transactions.' "I am sorry, Sir, for my mistake.' "And I shall be sorry, if what I have said should be productive of no good, but rather excite anger in you than serious reflection.' "Here our conversation ended, and I endeavoured to look unabashed, hold myself erect, and appear a person of no less consequence than himself: but, Dignity refused her aid; I was conscious of not being one of her sincere friends; I therefore summoned Assurance, and even she came reluctantly, sneaking as it were at my heels, and halfhiding. However, a formal bow, and your servant, Sir, finished the interview." In the conduct of Bryan Perdue, after the chagrin, disappointment, and humi liation he had suffered from this interview, Mr. Holcroft has given a masterly stroke of character, and displayed no superficial knowledge of the human heart. Bryan Perdue returns, slowly and rumibut he had gone out-perhaps to avoid nating, again to find Frederic Vaughan, him. Before his mother he dared not recur to the subject of money, but loitered in the parlour till he was ashamed, because he felt he was troublesome, in the hope again to see Henrietta. He loitered in vain, and at last took his leave: sauntering home with a dejection of spirits, hitherto unknown to him, a distributor puts the bill of a fortune-teller into his hands: without the slightest credulity in such impostors, he repairs to him merely to divert his thoughts. Thence he wan ders to a coffee-house which was frequented by his friend Henry Fairman: he was not there: business was over! Bryan would have gone home, but he had not the power-he had no disposition to read or study, and he could think of na resource but that which never failed, the billiardtable. With the two hundred and fifty pounds in his pocket he is led thither, not merely from habit, but with a hope to shake off the discontent which hung heavily on his mind, and came away, ing lost every farthing! In one stroke of the pencil the character of Bryan Perdue is here drawn, and a warning given against having recourse to the indulgence of a vicious propensity as an opiate for mo mentary wretchedness, hay To return to the story: Bryan Perdue runs on in a course of extravagance and licentiousness, writs are issued out against him for debt, and he is taken into custody. In a very few days, however, a temptation presents itself which he cannot resist for effecting his liberation. His friend and patron Mr. Saville had retired to the continent; and in consequence of some suspicion of Hazard's integrity as well as prudence, he was in the habit of sending over all money-bills addressed to Bryan Perdue, who took memorandums of their amount, and then gave them to Hazard and entered them in the books. Whilst in confinement, he receives among other bills one for five hundred pounds, drawn by a foreign merchant on a house in London, with the endorsement of Mr. Saville. Bryan appropriates this bill, endorses it himself, puts it into circulation, and obtains his freedom. Shrinking, however, at the consequences of this forgery, and perhaps at the ingratitude of his conduet, he immediately writes an account of what he had done to Mr. Saville, and acknowledges himself debtor for the sum. The forgery is soon detected, and in short Bryan Perdue takes his trial for the offence: by some flaw the jury are directed to acquit the prisoner; and Bryan, who with all his vicious propensities and habits had never been a radically bad man, is now restored to society, purified by adversity of all his immoralities. Unable to hold up his head, a wretched object for Scorn to point his finger at, he retires to a convent in France, but the indolence and depravity of the monks soon disgust him with their society, and through the influence of his friend Henry Fairman he is sent to the superintendance of a plantation in one of the West India islands. Here he remains beloved and respected by every one, marries an amiable woman, and is the father of a flou rishing and happy family. The specific purpose of this novel is to induce all humane and thinking men, such as legislators ought to be and often are, to consider the general and the adventitious value of human life, and the moral tendency of our penal laws;" we trust that this consideration is never absent from the mind of a legislator; nor is it possible that he should not contemplate the existence of a case where capital punishment is inflicted on an individual, whose life, if it had been preserved, might have been honourable to himself, and beneficial to society. Such cases must occur; and even supposing them to occur but rarely, we are much disposed to accord with Mr. Holcroft, in drawing the inference that capital punishments are therefore inconsistent with policy and humanity. The most depraved and hardened reprobate, the most ferocious monster, may surely be so employed as to yield some indemnification to society for the injury it may have suffered from his outrages, and perhaps be so employed as to enforce reflection on the culprit's mind, and convert the abandoned sinner into a contrite penitent. We have said that the prominent fault of this work is a lack of interest: the interest, however, rises as we proceed, and as the flippancy which prevails in the first volume is laid aside. Bryan Perdue gives a faithful confession of his offences; but his confessions are not accompanied with the tone and language of remorse; he generally lightens his delinquency-and in real life which of us does not ?-by the relation of some exculpatory circumstances, calculated to excite commiseration, and which rendered him at the moment peculiarly susceptible of seduction. On the whole we are far from thinking meanly of this novel, though we are persuaded that a much greater effect might have been produced out of the materials: let the gamester go to Covent-garden and see Kemble and Mrs. Siddons in the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Beverley; if he does not shudder at the scene, and feel all the anguish of remorse and apprehension, he may read the memoirs of Bryan Perdue with perfect composure. Mr. Holcroft is too familiar with the public, and it is very true that familiarity breeds contempt: be has been so often before us in the different characters of a traveller, a dramatist, a novelist, a translator, &c. that he feels no sort of diffidence or reserve. This levity of style, this unreined prate, is indecorous: we were offended with it in perusing his tra◄ vels through France; and though there is less of it here, there is too much to be passed over without censure. Mr. Hol, croft has studied the human character, and it is his own fault if he does not rank among the best of our novel-writers. ART. II.-Fleetwood, or the New Man of Feeling: by W. GODWIN. 3 vols. 8vo. MR. GODWIN's novels are the re- verse of trivial: his incidents, his charac ters, are uncommon: he often sacrifices probability to originality; and takes care to be new at the risk of being natural. This secures attention but not interest; the pleasures of surprise can be enjoyed but once: a second perusal of what is morally marvellous, neither excites illusion nor sympathy. Yet the beauties of detail are frequent, great, and striking: an eloquence of expression, an energy of intellect, often arouse and stimulate the reader who would feel it ungrateful, if not insincere, to withhold high commendation. Fleetwood is not, we think, the best of these novels: the first volume is less prepossessing than the first volume of Caleb Williams, or the first volume of Saint Leon; but in this instance, though not in the two former, the story acquires importance in its progress, and the composition continually improves. Fleetwood's education at Oxford has little to do with the formation of his character. The episode of Withers is gressly improbable that a mere puppet should be so manufactured by students as to pass for the master of a college; that a ventriloquist should so supply it with voice as to make a young man believe he is formally rusticated; and that, after the de tection of the trick, this mimic censure should appear so mortifying that the culprit drowns himself in the Isis; is utter extravagance. The story of Ruffigny is better; but the grand portion of the book is the jealousy of the married Fleetwood, which is painted in traits worthy of a great dramatist. Mr. Godwin will no doubt some day revise his novels for collective publication: he should omit much, and confine himself to those sweeps of narration which serve to prepare and frame the main catastrophe. Every needless character, every episodical adventure, is a blemish. A constant bearing down on the one great purpose is the most essential condition of excellence in art. To this wholeness, to this unity of design, every subordinate consideration should be sacrificed. Othello and Macbeth are therefore the best plass of Shakspeare, because of their entireress of plan. Fleetwood might easily be abridged into a complete novel: we are not, like the antients, condemned to abide by our first editions: the "Delere licebit Quod non edideris: nescit vox missa revertì,” is not true of modern publication. Translated from the German of Goethe, 12mo. pp. 142. ART. III.—Herman and Dorothea: a Tale. ONE source of pleasure in the perusal of works of art consists in comparing the peculiarities of different ages and nations; and in observing the variety of form and fashion, the distinct costume and drapery of idea, which diversify, in the several languages, a repeated imitation of the phenomena of human nature. As the vulgar in a sea-port, when they see a foreigner land, burst out a laughing at the odd cut of his clothes, and the quaint articulation of his brogue; so some critics revile every thing foreign, as if it were therefore ridiculous and tasteless, and point at nationalities of manner as vulgarity. This is especially the case with those whose comparison of art is narrow and confined; whose range of reading never extended beyond their school-books, and their patrial literature; and who think that must be absurd for which there is no precedent among domestic writers. The French carry still further than ourselves this narrow bigotry of taste; and can tolerate no attempts at poetry which are not cast in the patent moulds of their Racines and Boileaus, no prose which varies much from that of Fenelon and Voltaire. Those who have read the Odyssey and Theocritus, must be aware that the Greeks have applied the picturesque circumstantiality of the Homeric style, to the description of the real manners of middle and low life; and that this method of delineation produces a far greater and more satisfactory effect than the finical embellishment of the same manners attempted by the genteel muse of Virgil. Homer's bucolic passages describe peasantry as they were, and acquaint us with their usages, their arts, their mode of life, their degree of civilization. It is the same with Theocritus, who was formed by the study of the Odyssey. But Virgil's bucolic pas sages describe peasantry as they never can have been; and, by an inconsistent unnatural mixture of elegant sentiment and rustic occupations, give us the idea of a gentleman-farmer tossing about his dung in white gloves, and perfuming his milk with orange-flower water lest it should taste of the turnip. During the old court of France, the royal family, tired of etiquette, would occasionally retire into the gardens of Trianon, and there act shepherds and shepherdesses, millers and bakers. Of such an Arcadia, the eclogues of Virgil contain a probable description. Herman and Dorothea is not, like the pastorals of Pope, an imitation of VirgiHan art, but of Homeric nature: it must be classed with the efforts of Theocritus, surpasses then as much as an entire hay surpasses a single scene. Here every escription is copied from extant living nanners, with a likeness and a completeess for which the remotest posterity will ke grateful; and which may be compared, or truth of nature and fidelity of delisation, with those paintings of the Flemh school, in which Ostade and Teniers ave perpetuated the Dutch fairs and Bern-carousals of their time. Pope, ke Watteau, habits his milk-maids in op-petticoats; Goethe, like Rembrandt, thes even his heroes in the garb of sy life. In the English idyls of Southey, e probable, the natural, the real, is often picted with simple exactness and select licity he may use aqua tinta where dy-colour would be preferable, but his ethod of sketching more resembles that Goethe than any other English artist's. may be critical heterodoxy, as yet, to mire either; but we prefer their ecgues far to those of Philips, of Pope, d even of Gay. Goethe has, in his n country, a competitor, and we think urpasser, in this plan of composition; ss, the author of Luise. Mr. Holcroft some time ago undertook ranslation of Herman and Dorothea in ink verse: it was not close enough, and telegant enough, to render a new style of mposition characteristically and attracely. The same task has here been underenin prose with severer fidelity, but with gligent feebleness. The abrupt beginning 1 picturesque description of the original tantly excites curiosity: here an introction is prefixed, beginning, like a fairy e of Perrault's, with a "there lived a rthy couple," every part of which induction is shortly after retold by imcation. The beginning of the poet ders attention necessary; the begin1g of the translator intercepts all occan for it, and of course defers the inest, beside compelling the subsequent ission of the Homeric close. It was ficult so completely to spoil a first page: the second line of the original, the wn looks swept, dead; not fifty of all e inhabitants are left:" the translator erts a "methinks," as if that was ubtful which a man sees, as if the hybole of agitated impression ought to be tened down by qualifying expressions. This habitual loss of minute beauties makes in the course of a rhapsody a great deduction. The third chapter is a good picture of the progress of subordinate luxury in Germany. his mother had wiped away the tear that stole "After the respectful son had retired, and down her cheek, that she might not reproach the husband she loved; the host, addressing himself to his guests, continued thus to express his dissatisfaction, but with less violence. It is in vain,' said he, to attempt to make a man that which he is not; and I dare not flatter myself that our son will be more than merely satisfied with being equal to his father, or will endeavour to surpass him. This, from his birth, has been my firm and ardent hope: for we should never have arrived at civilization, if every man had trod in the steps of his predecessor: and the progress of the arts and sciences, under such limitations, would have been tardy. If we had rebuilt our cities and houses, from age to age, in the grotesque taste and inconvenient manner in which they had been first erected, we should You may judge of a man's understanding when you enter his house; as you may form an opinion of its magistrates when you come into a city. If the walls are tottering, the streets dirty, the stones loose, and the houses untiled, you may be sure it is ill governed. When the city magistrates do not inspect the general habits of cleanliness, the citizens degenerate into the most disgusting negligence; curable disease. I, therefore, am desirous and this gradually becomes a fixed and inthat Herman should travel without delay; and visit at least Strasburg, Frankfort, and the agreeable Manheim. For the man, who has seen large and well-regulated cities, will spare no pains to embellish and improve his native town, however small it may be. Are not our have whitened, and our church that looks as newly-repaired gates, our tower which we if it were built but yesterday, the admiration of every stranger who beholds them? Does he not praise our well-paved streets, and our aqueducts, which are so admirably contrived for the general safety, in case of fire? All this has been done since the great conflagration. I have been chosen, six times, inspectand, by my exertions in completing the useor of the public buildings, in our council; ful works which had been undertaken by worthy patriots and left unfinished, as well as beginning others on my own plans, I have justly obtained the esteem and gratitude of my fellow-citizens. My example excited the emalation of the other members of the council; and now every one takes a pride and pleasure in making improvements in the town: and the new-paved broad-way, which leads fear our young men will not employ their to the high road, is nearly finished. But I talents so beneficially; for some appear to have no other concern than that of adorning be now in a state little short of barbarism. their persons, and cajoling the ladies; while others vegetate in their houses, plodding over mean occupations; and I fear Herman will be of this class.' "Dear husband,' interrupted the mother, anxious to defend her son, indeed you are unjust to the poor youth, and too often reprove him. This is not the way to make him what you wish him to be. We cannot exact that our children should in every respect answer our expectations: we must accept and love them such as they are; it is our duty to give them a good education, and direct their talents to the benefit of society; but we have no right to force their inclinations. Some have one talent, some another; each is useful in its way, and makes its possessor happy. I cannot hear our Herman undervalued, and be silent: I know he is worthy of the fortune which he will inherit: he is active and indefatigable in the regulation of the affairs intrusted to his care; his conduct is in every respect a model to our young citizens; and I feel certain that he will not sit the lowest in the council: but, if the poor boy is continually reproved and mortified, he will lose all courage and emulation.' With these words she left the room, and went in search of Herman, that she might console and restore him to cheerfulness; and this excellent son well deserved to be consoled. "When she was gone, the host, turning to his guests, good-humouredly said,Wives and children are unmanageable beings: they will have their own way; and always expect to be indulged and flattered. Once for all, I maintain that he who does not advance goes back.' "I am of your opinion, my worthy neighbour,' answered the apothecary, with thought ful gravity; and I am continually looking round me to seek for what may improve the comforts of life, provided these improvements are not expensive. But if the man who wishes to embellish his house, both within and without, has a small income, the greatest activity and zeal are insufficient. The middle class, we must acknowledge, in general are not rich: they see the judicious improvements of their neighbours, who have the power to make them. The expence is greater than others can afford; and they are every moment stopped, and disappointed in the execution of their plans and proceedings. What would not I have done? But who is not afraid to enter into great expence, in these dear and dangerous times? I would long ago have given my house a modern and smiling appearance; the glass panes of the casements should have been large and handsome: but where is the man that can follow the improvements of the wealthy trader, who can procure the best of every thing at prime cost? Look at the house over the way, it has the appearance of being new. The white stucco is beautifully re lieved by the green window-pannels; and the large crystal panes, which they enclose, give it a cheerful splendor. All the other houses are thrown in the shade; yet, soon after the fire, my shop of the Angel, and the hotel of the Golden Lion, were the handsomest in the market-place. My garden too was famous through the country; and every passenger stopped to peep over the red palisadoes at the statues of the beggar, in stone, and the dwarf in a yellow coat. Every body who took coffee with me in the superb grotto, which I own is now almost in ruins, praised the symmetry of the workmanship, and the beautiful contrast of the shells; and the connoisseur examined the various fossils, and corals, with admiration. The paintings of the saloon, in which ladies and gentlemen were seen walking full dressed in a garden, presenting nosegays with the delicate tips of their fingers, were no less admired. But who, nowa-days, would condescend to once glance at these ornaments? I, for my part, an vesed at my inability to follow the present taste, and seldom go into my garden; for its dec rations are out of date. The palisadoes, and garden chairs, must now either be white or green; every thing must be plain and neat: carving and gilding are prohibited. Your furniture must be light and elegant, and it rises in price as it rises in elegance. I would, like my neighbours, if I could afford it, gladly make alterations, follow the fashion, and renew my furniture from time to time; but a man is afraid now to move the least out of his usual track; the wages of labour are now too heavy to pay. I have long wished! to have the angel Michael, and the terrible dragon that rolls under his feet, which you know is the sign of my shop, fresh gilt; but the expence was so great that I thought is prudent to leave them as they are.”” We much wish that an artist-translator had undertaken this volume, and had given in the hexametrical versification of the original, a faithful copy of all its peculiarities. The didactic passages are full of good sense and of natural morality; the manners and customs are painted with liveliness and nationality: there is much dramatic management, much humour, and much feeling, displayed: it is some such poem as the Vicar of Wakefield would be in verse, a drawing from nature, and resembling nature. It is one of those books which, if a man does not like, be should learn to like. They have made some progress in taste, who enjoy Her. man and Dorothea: they take their own feeling, not the opinion of the multitude, for their guide. |