VIII.

TALES OF THE SOUTH AND WEST.

ENGLISH critics have noticed, as a trait in American literature now becoming a veritable something, the facility of invention and power, with skill of execution, of our writers of fiction. American tales are at a premium at this present writing, in London and Edinburgh, and are employed to eke out the pages of some of the most flourishing of their magazines. From English critics of the present dynasty have come some of the most generous praises of American authors, as from Jerrold, Miss Barrett, and even Dickens, who at first copied Irving.

The article on American works of fiction, in the Foreign and Colonial Quarterly Review, some years since, was much the honestest and most liberal piece of criticism we have seen on American romance; but its excellence is in its general judgment almost wholly; inasmuch as many capital writers are not even mentioned, while inferior scribes occupy their place, to their exclusion. Such sins of omission and commission can result only from ignorance of their works. Dr. Bird, Mr. Ware, and Mr. Carlton receive a just sentence; whilst we read not a word respecting Mr. Dana, Judge Hall, Mr. Poe, Mr. Simms, authors certainly entitled to honorable mention.

Not to speak of the finish, the humor, the delicate grace

of Irving, in his Dutch and English tales; without referring to the fine invention, aerial fancy, and purely original vein of Hawthorne, in his admirable fancy sketches and admirable pictures of New England romance, that practical mingling of shrewdness and mysticism; entirely excluding the domestic histories of Mr. Dana, so earnest and true, instinct with genuine passion, and with its rare accompaniment, deep, rich, "marrowy" sentiment, the very breath of our intellectual and sensitive life; and leaving entirely out of question the powerful fictions of Brown and Cooper, we still can point to a large body of writers of fiction, tales, "miniature novels," (which Schelegel thought the best form of the novel,) and narrative sketches, affording convincing proof, if any could be wanting, that imagination, at least adequate to the production of a prose fiction of the first class, and creative power, are not wanting here, and which, employed on American themes, whether of history, character or manners, legend or landscape, cannot fail to give to our literature a national character, which, indeed, it is every day acquiring.

Thus, beside the genuine originals we have mentioned, we have to fill out a good list of tale-writers; Miss Leslie, a sort of modernized Miss Burney on a smaller scale, and like her, expert in strong satire of vulgarity; Miss Sedgwick, pleasing in her home pictures and tales for children; and pre-eminent among American female writers, Mrs. Kirkland, the cleverest sketcher of western manners we have, and the best western raconteur, at the same time; not in the same line with Judge Hall or any other western writer, but in a class unique and individual. Of the two Neals, John has tact and power; Joseph, humor, (of the broadest,) and copiousness. The Portland writer is expert

in a love history or life-assurance story; while the Philadelphian is best in city scenes of local and burlesque humor. Briggs is quite at home in a satirical tale, with his ingenuity, tact, keen observation and dry humor. Hoffman can throw off a better hunting or sporting story than any writer we have. Mathews has both humor and pathetic skill, and in his Motley Book has done some excellent things. Sands left some laughable pieces, verging on caricature. The critic in the Quarterly referred to, says, and says handsomely, though truly: "We rarely, if ever, take up an American Annual or Magazine, without finding some one contribution individually racy, and without any peer or prototype on this side of the ocean." With the same critic we hardly agree, that though more unpretending in form than the regular novel, the list of tale writers, in their attempts, "contains more characteristic excellence than is to be found in the library of accredited novels." We have no one capital novel except the Pilot; all Cooper's fictions, admirable as they are in scenes and particular descriptions, being confessedly, even according to Mr. Simms, Cooper's heartiest critic, excellent only in those passages, and abounding in faults elsewhere.

Many of these tales have a sectional character and reputation. They are, professedly, so in their choice of subject and back-grounds. It is a history of love or hate, to be sure; but the locality is laid in Illinois, Michigan or South Carolina, with the scenery peculiar to those regions. It is a lovehistory, but of planter, Indian negro, or early settler, and the interest varies accordingly, European readers cannot be supposed to read with sufficient knowledge, or with analogous feeling of patriotic interest, and hence these national and local narratives lose for them a striking and peculiar

charm. To us, Americans, for this reason, they offer a very strong attraction, independent of the genius involved in the conception of them, or the artistic skill employed in their

execution.

We have for the West, Judge Hall and Mrs. Kirkland; for the South, Mr. Simms; for New-England, Mr. Hawthorne; Dutch New-York has her Irving; for revolutionary historical novelist, Cooper; Philadelphia has her Brown; Virginia, Wirt.

Mary Clavers, the most agreeable and original of American female writers, the equal, not the imitator of Miss Mitford, is perhaps the best writer of western sketches and manners we have seen; she pursues a course, and occupies a prominent place in her line of authorship, quite distinct from Judge Hall. The latter writer illustrates rather the historical romance of the west-especially that of Indian and French settlers' life, than the manners of the present race of emigrants. Her sprightliness, good sense, and keen penetration, are inexhaustible, and her style is a clear and natural reflection of these fine qualities. Her circle is apparently confined to that region; but why it should be so, does not follow, necessarily, or by consequence. After the universal applause with which her western tales have been received, what new tribute can we bring to her grace, hrumor and naturalness? Mrs. Kirkland is the Miss Burney of the new settlements, (not the Madame d'Arblay, for Evelina is the best of the fictions of that writer, as well as the earliest.) Her ordinary observation is not confined to the city or village, but flourishes in the back-woods. The broad vulgarity, the rustic pedantry, the senseless pretensions of a certain class of vulgar minds the world over, is to be found wherever real coarseness but affected fastidiousness

exists.

Mrs. Clavers, with all her satire of such persons, has nothing of the same quality in her own writings, a criticism that cannot so justly be passed upon the authoress of Evelina, who cherished a certain artificial gentility, the reverse in appearance of vulgarity, but still its invariable accompaniment. The humor of Mrs. Kirkland is gay and sympathetic, as well as keen and satirical. She can jest as well as ridicule; she laughs with, as often as she laughs at, her characters.

We know not anything we can add to our previous judgment of Mr. Simms' Wigwam and Cabin, save in the way of parallel with the somewhat similar series of tales by Judge Hall; the western historian, par excellence. Both are accomplished raconteurs, but Mr. Simms brings more of the novelist's art, and the concentrated force of the practised writer to his aid, than the Judge appears to us to possess, or to be able to control. In level passages, Hall is generally the neater writer, always correct and pleasing: yet Mr. Simms throws more power, passion and energy into his narratives. The Judge is something of a humorous satirist, and indulges in a playful vein of innocent raillery, which we are not apt to meet in the pages of the southern novelist. Making a fair allowance for the difference between the Indian in the south or at the west, we still think Mr. Simms' Indians the more truly and graphically painted. Judge Hall seems to be most at home in his romantic legends and domestic history of the early French settlers, their manners, customs, character and disposition.

This writer holds a pleasing pencil, and with which he has sketched many a fair scene. His descriptions of the prairie scattered through all of his tales, are peculiarly well done.