• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 15651 0

to a narration — and by leaving the result as a wonder not to be accounted for. It will be found that bizzarreries thus conducted, are usually far more effective than those otherwise managed. The attention of the author, who does not depend upon explaining away his incredibilities, is directed to giving them the character and the luminousness of truth, and thus are brought about, unwittingly, some of the most vivid creations of human intellect. The reader, too, readily perceives and falls in with the writer’s humor, and suffers himself to be borne on thereby. On the other hand, what difficulty, or inconvenience, or danger can there be in leaving us uninformed of the important facts that a certain hero did not actually discover the elixir vitæ, could not really make himself invisible, and was not either a ghost in good earnest, or a bonâ fide wandering Jew?

CORNELIUS MATHEWS.

“WAKONDAH “ is the composition of Mr. Cornelius Mathews, one of the editors of the Monthly Magazine, “Arcturus.” In the December number of the journal, the poem was originally set forth by its author, very much “avec l’air d’un homme qui sauve sa patrie.” To be sure, it was not what is usually termed the leading article of the month. It did not occupy that post of honor which, hitherto, has been so modestly filled by “Puffer Hopkins.” But it took precedence of some exceedingly beautiful stanzas by Professor Longfellow, and stood second only to a very serious account of a supper which, however well it might have suited the taste of an Ariel, would scarcely have feasted the Anakim, or satisfied the appetite of a Grandgousier. The supper was, or might have been, a good thing. The poem which succeeded it is not; nor can we imagine what has induced Messrs. Curry & Co. to be at the trouble of its republication. We are vexed with these gentlemen for having thrust this affair the second time before us. They have placed us in a predicament we dislike. In the pages of “Arcturus” the poem did not come necessarily under the eye of the Magazine critic. There is a tacitly-understood courtesy about these matters — a courtesy upon which we need not comment. The contributed papers in any one journal of the class of “Arcturus” are not considered as debateable by any one other. General propositions, under the editorial head, are rightly made the subject of discussion; but in speaking of “Wakondah,” for example, in the pages of our own Magazine, we should have felt as if making an occasion. Now, upon our first perusal of the poem in question, we were both astonished and grieved that we could say, honestly, very little in its praise: — astonished, for by some means, not just now altogether intelligible to ourselves, we had become imbued with the idea of high poetical talent in Mr. Mathews: — grieved, because, under the circumstances of his position as ­editor of one of the very best journals in the country, we had been sincerely anxious to think well of his abilities. Moreover, we felt that to speak ill of them, under any circumstances whatever, would be to subject ourselves to the charge of envy or jealousy, on the part of those who do not personally know us. We, therefore, rejoiced that “Wakondah” was not a topic we were called upon to discuss. But the poem is republished, and placed upon our table, and these very “circumstances of position” which restrained us in the first place, render it a positive duty that we speak distinctly in the second.

And very distinctly shall we speak. In fact, this effusion is a dilemma whose horns goad us into frankness and candor — “c’est un malheur,” to use the words of Victor Hugo, “d’où on ne pourrait se tirer par des periphrases, par des quemadmodums et des verumenimveros.” If we mention it at all, we are forced to employ the language of that region where, as Addison has it, “they sell the best fish and speak the plainest English.” “Wakondah,” then, from beginning to end, is trash. With the trivial exceptions which we shall designate, it has no merit whatever; while its faults, more numerous than the leaves of Valombrosa, are of