Part 25

“And your heart, your heart itself? Such things have been, sweet Isabel.” His hand was _very_ hard, but she did not withdraw hers.

“No, not _that_, because—because I have not my heart to give.” She spoke rapidly, and with emotion. “I have it not to give, and I have so longed to tell you my secret! You have such influence with my aunt, you have been so affectionate, so like a father to me, that if you would only intercede with _her_, for HIM and me, I know she could not refuse. I have often——often thought of entreating this, and now it was so kind of you to ask, if I could love an old man, giving me the opportunity of showing that I do, by confiding in you, and asking your intercession.”

The room became misty to the General’s eyes, and the rattle of a battle-field sounded in his ears, and beat upon his heart.

“And pray, Miss Montford,” he said, after a pause, “who may _him_ be?”

“Ah, _you_ do not know him!—my aunt forbade the continuance of our acquaintance the day before I had the happiness to meet you. It was most fortunate I wooed you to call upon her, thinking—” (she looked up at his fine face, whose very wrinkles were aristocratic, and smiled her most bewitching smile) “thinking the presence of the only man she ever loved would soften her, and hoping that I should one day be privileged to address you as my friend, my uncle!” And she kissed his hand.—It really was hard to bear. “I have heard her say,” persisted the young lady, “that when prompted by evil counsel, she refused you, she loved you, and since your return she only lives in your presence.” The General wondered if this was true, and thought he would not give the young beauty a triumph. He was recovering his self-possession. “I remembered your admiration of _passing belles_, and felt how kindly you tolerated me, _for my aunt’s sake_; and surely you will aid me in a matter upon which my happiness, and the happiness of that poor dear fellow depends?” She bent her beautiful eyes on the ground.

“And who is the poor dear fellow?” inquired the General, in a singularly husky voice.

“Henry Mandeville,” half-whispered Isabel. “Oh, is it not a beautiful name? the initials on those lovely handkerchiefs you gave me will still do; I shall still be I. M.”

“A son of old Admiral Mandeville’s?”

“The _youngest_ son,” she sighed, “that is my aunt’s objection; were he the _eldest_, she would have been too happy. Oh, sir, he is such a fine fellow—such a hero!—lost a leg at Cabool, and received I don’t know how many stabs from those horrid Affgauns.”

“Lost a leg!” repeated the General, with an approving glance at his own; “why he can never dance with you.”

“No, but he can admire my dancing, and does not think my curtsey a dip, a shuffle, a bend, a bob, a slide, a canter! Ah! dear General, I was always perfection in his eyes.”

“By the immortal duke,” thought the General, “the young divinity is laughing at me.”

“My aunt only objects to his want of money; now I have abundance for both; and your recommendation, dear sir, at the Horse Guards, would at once place him in some position of honor and of profit; and even if it were abroad, I could leave my dear aunt with the consciousness that her happiness is secured by you, dear, guardian angel that you are. Ah! sir, at your time of life you can have no idea of our feelings.”

“Oh yes, I have!” sighed the General.

“Bless you!” she exclaimed enthusiastically; “I thought you would recall the days of your youth and feel for us; and when you see my dear Harry”—

“With a cork leg”—

“Ay, or with two cork legs—you will I know be convinced that my happiness is as secure as your own.”

“Women are riddles, one and all!” said the General, “and I should have known that before.”

“Oh! do not say such cruel things and disappoint me, depending as I have been on your kindness and affection. Hark!” she continued, “I hear my aunt’s footstep: now dear, _dear_ General, reason coolly with her—my very existence depends on it. If you only knew him! Promise, do promise, that you will use your influence, all-powerful as it is, to save my life.”

She raised her beautiful eyes, swimming in unshed tears, to his; she called him her uncle, her dear noble-hearted friend; she rested her snowy hand lovingly, imploringly on his shoulder, and even murmured a hope that, her aunt’s consent once gained, it might not be impossible to have the two weddings _on the same day_.

The General may have dreaded the banter of sundry members of the “Senior United Service Club,” who had already jested much at his devotion to the two Isabels; he _may_ have felt a generous desire to make two young people happy, and his good sense doubtless suggested that sixty-five and seventeen bear a strong affinity to January and May; he certainly did himself honor, by adopting the interests of a brave young officer as his own, and avoided the banter of “the club,” by pledging his thrice-told vows to his “old love,” the same bright morning that his “new love” gave her heart and hand to Henry Mandeville.

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REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

_The Works of Shakspeare: the Text Carefully Restored According to the First Editions; With Introductions, Notes, Original and Selected, and a Life of the Poet. By the Rev. H. N. Hudson, A. M. In Eleven Volumes. Boston: James Monroe & Co. Vol. 3._

This beautiful edition of Shakspeare, a fac-simile of the celebrated Chiswick edition in type and paper, has now reached its third volume. It is edited by Mr. Hudson, well known all over the country as one of the most accomplished of Shakspeare’s critics and commentators, and who in his present labors has far surpassed the reputation he obtained by his lectures on the same subject. The present volume contains The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, All’s Well that Ends Well, and The Taming of the Shrew. The text is very carefully revised, and the notes are clear, short, and full of matter, and flash the meaning of obscure phrases, remote allusions, and other difficulties of the text, at once upon the reader’s mind, without any parade of learning or paradox of interpretation. It is, however, in the introductory notices to the plays that the analytical and interpretative genius of the editor shines forth most resplendently. Every lover of Shakspeare should possess this edition, had it nothing to recommend it but these alone. They give the results of meditations, alike penetrating and profound, on the interior processes of Shakspeare’s mind in creating character and in forming plots; and the marvel of his genius, in its depth, delicacy, comprehension, fertility, and sweetness, is developed with the austerity of science and the geniality of a sympathizing spirit. These introductions are not only thus critical, but they include in a short space a large amount of antiquarian knowledge respecting the bibliography and sources of the plays; and the old tales which suggested or formed the basis of the plots, are re-told with much skill and simplicity of narration.

The masterpiece of the present volume is the introduction to The Merchant of Venice. It is exceedingly brilliant in style, but the brilliancy seems to come from an inward heat and fervor generated by an intense contemplation of the subject, so that the diction sparkles, as Ben Jonson would say, “like salt in fire.” The brilliancies are flashes, not of fancy, but of thought; and frequently are the result of vigorous condensation in statement, or of logic which gets on fire by the very rapidity of its movement. The finest elements of the style, however, are its subtleties of statement and representation, subtleties which follow the most intricate windings and enfoldings of complex thought, speeding on the fire track of an ideal allusion to the very limits of its course, and thoroughly mastering all the obstacles of expression in giving form to the most evanescent workings of the creative power.

Thus in speaking of the apparent heterogeneousness but real unity of the play, he remarks: “The persons naturally fall into three several groups, with each its several plot and action; yet the three are most skillfully complotted, each standing out clear and distinct in its place, yet concurring with the others in dramatic unity, so that every thing helps on every other thing, without either the slightest confusion or the slightest appearance of care to avoid it. Of these three groups it is hardly necessary to add that Antonio, Shylock and Portia are the respective centres; while the part of Lorenzo and Jessica, though strictly an episode, seems, nevertheless, to grow forth as an element of the original germ, _a sort of inherent superfluity_, and as such essential, not indeed to the being, but to the well-being of the work; in short, a fine romantic undertone accompaniment to the other parts, yet contemplated and provided for in the whole plan and structure of the piece; _itself_ in harmony with all the rest, and therefore perfecting their harmony with one another.” We will put it to the consciousness of every reader of Shakspeare if this does not chime with his feeling of the matter; but to show the grounds of this instinctive taste, and exhibit it in its intellectual form, and justify it by the austerest principles of philosophical criticism, requires Mr. Hudson’s sharpness of eye and ready refinements of expression. The specimen we have given, as it is not the best which might be selected, so is it a very common and unobtrusive characteristic of his criticism.

In commenting on the characters of the play, Mr. Hudson displays more than ordinary keenness and discrimination. We are acquainted with no student of Shakspeare who could read the analysis of Shylock, Antonio, Portia and Jessica, without receiving an addition to his knowledge. Even Launcelot Gobbo has his share of the critic’s acumen; his necessity, in the organism of the piece, is demonstrated; and the exquisite _non-sequiturism_ of his whole personality is finely described. “A mixture, indeed, of conceit and drollery, and hugely wrapped up in self, yet he is by no means a commonplace buffoon, but stands firm and secure in the sufficiency of his original stock. His elaborate nonsense, his grasping at a pun without catching it, yet feeling just as grand as if he did, is both ludicrous and natural; his jokes, to be sure, are mostly failures; nevertheless they are laughable, because he dreams not but that they succeed.”

It is needless to say that the prominent feature in Mr. Hudson’s criticism is Shylock. The combination in him of the individual and the national, Shylock the Jew and the Jew Shylock, is indicated with a bold, firm hand. One paragraph is especially powerful. “Shylock,” he says, “is a true representative of his nation; wherein we have a pride which for ages never ceased to provoke hostility, but which no hostility could ever subdue; a thrift which still invited rapacity, but which no rapacity could ever exhaust; and a weakness, which, while it exposed the subjects to wrong, only deepened their hate, because it left them without the means or the hope of redress. Thus Shylock is a type of national sufferings, sympathies, and antipathies. Himself an object of bitter insult and scorn to those about him; surrounded by enemies whom he is too proud to conciliate and too weak to oppose; he can have no life among them but money; no hold upon them but interest; no indemnity out of them but revenge. Such being the case, what wonder that the elements of national greatness became congealed or petrified into malignity? As avarice was the passion in which he mainly lived, of course, the Christian virtues which thwarted this were the greatest wrong that could be done him. With these strong national traits are interwoven personal traits equally strong. Thoroughly and intensely Jewish, he is not more a Jew than he is Shylock. In his hard, icy intellectuality, and his ‘dry, mummy-like tenacity’ of purpose, with a dash now and then of biting sarcastic humor, we see the remains of a great and noble nature, out of which all the genial sap of humanity has been pressed by accumulated injuries. With as much elasticity of mind as stiffness of neck, every step he takes but the last is as firm as the earth he treads upon. Nothing can daunt, nothing disconcert him; remonstrance cannot move, ridicule cannot touch, obloquy cannot exasperate him; when he has not provoked, he has been forced to bear them; and now that he does provoke them, he is proof against them. In a word, he may be broken; he cannot be bent.”

We cannot refrain from picking out a sentence, here and there, in the critic’s admirable delineation of Portia. “Eminently practical in her tastes and turn of mind, full of native, home-bred sense and virtue, she unites therewith something of the ripeness and dignity of a sage, a rich, mellow eloquence, and a large, noble discourse, the whole being tempered with the best grace and sensibility of womanhood. . . Nothing can be more fitting and well-placed than her demeanor, now bracing her speech with grave maxims of moral and practical wisdom, now unbending her mind in playful sallies of wit, or innocent, roguish banter. . . . It is no drawback upon Portia’s strength and substantial dignity of character, that her nature is all overflowing with romance; rather, this it is that glorifies her and breathes enchantment about her; it adds that precious seeing to the eye which conducts her to such winning beauty and sweetness of deportment, and makes her the ‘rich-souled’ creature that Schlegel describes her to be.”

The introductions to All’s Well that Ends Well, and The Taming of the Shrew, are replete with shrewd remark and acute analysis, but both are inferior to the criticism of As You Like It. The woodland sweetness of this play tasks all the subtlety and all the enthusiasm of Mr. Hudson to do it justice. An exquisite ideal beauty casts its sweet and satisfying charm over the whole of this matchless comedy, and we envy Shakspeare’s delight in its composition more than Campbell envied his happiness in bodying forth A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Even Le Beau, the courtier of Frederic, is an ideal courtier; on inborn gentlemanliness, of the finest kind, stealing out from him in performing his most ungracious duties. This character is commonly performed on the stage by the worst actor the manager has in his company, but we have always noticed that the feeblest performer became lifted into dignity by simply pronouncing one golden sentence in the first act. It is where Le Beau expresses at once his loyal duty to Frederic and his admiration for Orlando’s brave and gentle qualities. As his master has chosen to be Orlando’s enemy, he cannot obey his impulse to be Orlando’s friend, and his parting words to the latter are touchingly noble:

“Sir, fare you well: Hereafter in a better world than this, I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.”

Mr. Hudson says very acutely of the characters of As You Like It, that, “diverted by fortune from all their cherished plans and purposes, they pass before us in just that _moral and intellectual dishabille_, which best reveals their indwelling graces of heart and mind.” This, it seems to us, touches the inmost secret of the delight all mankind have in this play. There is a complete absence of restraint upon expression, and the tongues of all run of their own sweet will, in a region of perfect freedom. It is whim exalted into poetry. Of Touchstone, our critic remarks, that though he never touches so deep a chord as the poor fool in Lear, that “he is the most entertaining of Shakspeare’s privileged characters. . . . It is curious to observe how the poet takes care to let us know from the first, that beneath the affectations of his calling some precious sentiments have been kept alive; that far within the fool _there is a secret reserve of the man_, ready to leap forth and combine with better influences as soon as the incrustations of art are thawed and broken up.” Passing over some keen observations on Jaques and the class of character to which he belongs, we come to Mr. Hudson’s exquisite description of Rosalind, the style of which would alone tempt one to extract it. The ideal merriment of Rosalind—and after listening to her for an hour, it seems a misuse of the word merriment to apply it to glee less graceful, light and lark-like than her own—has rarely been touched with so delicate an analysis. “For wit,” he says, “this strange, queer, lovely being is fully equal, perhaps superior to Beatrice, yet nowise resembling her. A soft, subtle, nimble essence, consisting in one knows not what, ‘and springing up one can hardly tell how,’ her wit neither stings nor burns, but plays briskly and airily over all things within its reach, enriching and adorning them, insomuch that one could ask no greater pleasure than to be the continual theme of it. In its irrepressible vivacity it waits not for occasion, but runs on forever, and we wish it to run on forever: we have a sort of faith that her dreams are made of cunning, quirkish, graceful fancies. And her heart seems a perennial fountain of affectionate cheerfulness; no trial can break, no sorrow chill her flow of spirits; even her deepest sighs are breathed forth in a wrappage of innocent mirth; an arch, roguish smile irradiates her saddest tears. Yet beneath all her playfulness we feel that there is a firm basis of thought and womanly dignity, so that she never laughs away our respect.”

An edition of Shakspeare, edited so admirably as this—so convenient in its form, so elegant in its execution, and so cheap in its price—will, we hope, have a circulation over the country corresponding to its great merits.

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_Utterance; or, Private Voices to the Public Heart. A Collection of Home Poems. By Caroline A. Briggs. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._

Our first impression of this volume we received from its title, and that impression was, of course, unfavorable, as the title certainly smacks of affectation. But it requires but a slight examination of the book to dissipate such a prejudice. It is a thoroughly genuine expression of a sensitive, thoughtful, artless, affectionate, and fanciful nature, and readily wins its way into the reader’s esteem. Even those passages which evince a sort of innocent ignorance of the conventions of society and letters, have a _naïveté_ which charms while it amuses. The volume is a collection of short poems, ranged under the general titles of Voices of Affection, Voices of Grief, Voices of Cheer, Sacred Voices, and Voices of the Way, and one powerful Voice for the Poor, written in a measure whose movement has something of the fitful swiftness of the cold, wild wind, whose cruelty it deprecates. The following lines convey a vivid picture of desolation; the verse itself seeming to shudder in sympathy with the objects it holds up to pity:

Oh, the Poor! The poor and old, On the moor And on the wold— How desolate they are to-night and cold! —I peeped into the broken panes, Where the snow, and sleet, and rains Of many a weary year have stolen, Till the sashes are smeared, and soaked and swollen. Little children with tangled hair, And lips awry and feet half bare, Huddled around the smouldering fire, Like beasts half crouching in their lair; While each, the while, by stealth drew nigher, _Covetous of the other’s share._ Oh! ’twas a pitiful sight to see! And mothers too were there, With infants shivering on their knee, Or closer held with a mother’s care, Or laid to rest with a hurried prayer, A moan, half hope and half despair, A muttered, “Pitiless Storm, forbear!”

When we say that there is in this volume some poems that an austere taste would have omitted, we merely say what we suspect is the truth, that the poetess is young, and that this is her first introduction to the public. We might object to a piece, here and there, that the feeling outruns the thought and fancy, and that commonplace lines occasionally glide stealthily in to meet the demands of the rhyme; but the faults which criticism might exhibit are few in comparison with the merits which shine forth of their own light on almost every page. The general impression which the whole book leaves on the memory is very pleasing. The defect of all young poets, that of expansiveness, is continually apparent; but it is a natural result of the movement of a nature so full of sensibility that it refuses to submit to the restraints of condensation, but pours itself out of its own sweet will. As a natural result of this extreme sensitiveness, the volume is comparatively destitute of those electric flashes of impassioned imagination, which come, swift, sure, and smiling from moods of the mind in which thought is condensed as well as animated by passion; but it still exhibits so genial a love of nature, a flow of feeling so kindly and sympathetic, so much beauty, and purity and sweetness of fancy, and withal so much richness of promise, and such a ready yielding of the mind to the poetical aspects of things, that we trust it will meet with the success due to its native excellencies of heart and brain.

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_The Snow-Image, and other Twice-Told Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo._

This is a collection of Mr. Hawthorne’s Sketches and Stories which have not been included in any previous collection, and comprise his earliest and latest contributions to periodical literature. It can hardly add to his great reputation, though it fully sustains it. “The Snow-Image,” with which the volume commences, is one of those delicate creations which no imagination less etherial and less shaping than Hawthorne’s could body forth. “Main Street,” a sketch but little known, is an exquisite series of historical pictures, which bring the persons and events in the history of Salem, vividly home to the eye and the fancy. “Ethan Brand,” one of the most powerful of Hawthorne’s works, is a representation of a man, tormented with a desire to discover the unpardonable sin, and ending with finding it in his own breast. “The Great Stone Face,” a system of philosophy given in a series of characterizations, contains, among other forcible delineations, a full length of Daniel Webster. The volume contains a dozen other tales, some of them sunny in sentiment and subtle in humor, with touches as fine and keen as Addison’s or Steele’s: and others dark and fearful, as though the shadow of a thunder-cloud fell on the author’s page as he wrote. All are enveloped in the atmosphere, cheerful or sombre, of the mood of mind whence they proceeded, and all convey that unity of impression which indicates a firm hold on one strong conception. As stories, they arrest, fasten, fascinate attention; but, to the thoughtful reader they are not merely tales, but contributions to the philosophy of the human mind.

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_Memories of the Great Metropolis: or London from the Tower to the Crystal Palace. By F. Sanders. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo._