The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [883]
CHARLES F. BRIGGS.
MR. BRIGGS is better known as Harry Franco, a nom de plume assumed since the publication, in the “Knickerbocker Magazine,” of his series of papers called “Adventures of Harry Franco.” He also wrote for “The Knickerbocker” some articles entitled “The Haunted Merchant,” which have been printed since as a novel, and from time to time subsequently has been a contributor to that journal. The two productions just mentioned have some merit. They depend for their effect upon the relation in a straightforward manner, just as one would talk, of the most commonplace events — a kind of writing which, to ordinary, and especially to indolent intellects, has a very observable charm. To cultivated or to active minds it is in an equal degree distasteful, even when claiming the merit of originality. Mr. Briggs’s manner, however, is an obvious imitation of Smollett, and, as usual with imitation, produces an unfavorable impression upon those conversant with the original. It is a common failing, also, with imitators, to out-Herod Herod in aping the peculiarities of the model, and too frequently the faults are more pertinaciously exaggerated than the merits. Thus, the author of “Harry Franco” carries the simplicity of Smollett to insipidity, and his picturesque low-life is made to degenerate into sheer vulgarity.
If Mr. Briggs has a forte, it is a Flemish fidelity that omits nothing, whether agreeable or disagreeable; but I cannot call this forte a virtue. He has also some humor, but nothing of an original character. Occasionally he has written good things. A magazine article, called “Dobbs and his Cantelope,” was quite easy and clever in its way; but the way is necessarily a small one. And I ought not to pass over without some allusion to it, his satirical novel of “Tom Pepper.” As a novel, it really has not the slightest pretensions. To a genuine artist in literature, he is as Plumbe to Sully. Plumbe’s daguerreotypes have more fidelity than any portrait ever put on canvass, but so Brigg’s sketches of E. A. Duyckinck (Tibbings) and the author of Puffer Hopkins (Ferocious) are as lifelike as any portraits in words that have ever been drawn. But the subjects are little and mean, pretending and vulgar. Mr. Briggs would not succeed in delineating a gentleman. And some letters of his in Hiram Fuller’s paper — perhaps for the reason that they run through a desert of stupidity — some letters of his, I say, under the apt signature of “Ferdinand Mendoza Pinto,” are decidedly clever as examples of caricature — absurd, of course, but sharply absurd, so that, with a knowledge of their design, one could hardly avoid occasional laughter. I once thought Mr. Briggs could cause laughter only by his efforts at a serious kind of writing.
In connexion with Mr. John Bisco, he was the originator of the late “Broadway Journal” — my editorial association with that work not having commenced until the sixth or seventh number, although I wrote for it occasionally from the first. Among the principal papers contributed by Mr. B., were those discussing the paintings at the proceding exhibition of the Academy of Fine Arts in New York. I may be permitted to say, that there was scarcely a point in his whole series of criticisms on this subject at which I did not radically disagree with him. Whatever taste he has in art is, like his taste in letters, Flemish. There is a portrait painter for whom he has an unlimited admiration. The unfortunate gentleman is Mr. Page.
Mr. Briggs’s is about five feet six inches in height, somewhat slightly framed, with a sharp, thin face, narrow forehead, nose sufficiently prominent, mouth rather pleasant in expression, eyes not so good, gray and small, although occasionally brilliant. In dress he is apt to affect the artist, felicitating himself especially upon his personal acquaintance with artists and his general connoisseurship.