Misrepresentations of M. Thiers. 163 Wellington Despatches. He misrepresents the action of San Marcial, and calls the brilliant passage of the Bidassoa "the surprise of Marshal Soult at Andaya." He carps at the admirable plan of Soult to effect a junction with Suchet by Jaca; and sustains his case by exaggerating the two armies commanded respectively by Wellington and Lord William Bentinck, and by reducing falsely the numbers of Suchet. He passes over in all but silence the daring passage of the Nivelle, the able defence of Soult at Bayonne, and the interesting actions on the Nive-in attack and defence alike remarkable. He is so absurd as to blame the Duke of Dalmatia for not having thrown himself into Bordeaux; that is, engulphed himself in the Landes, and lost all chance of communicating with Suchet; and he describes the glorious victory of Orthez as "a battle where Soult killed or wounded six thousand men, and left three or four thousand on the field," the real numbers being two thousand five hundred to four! Finally, he absolves Suchet from all censure, and sneers at the "temporising genius" of Wellington; that is, of the general who had won the battle of Vittoria, and who, in the campaign of 1813-14, with Soult in front and Suchet on his flank, and with mixed armies, certainly scarcely superior to those, which might have coalesced against him, not only drove the French out of Spain, but in less than six weeks, in the spring of 1814, had "forced the French from the neighbourhood of Bayonne to Toulouse, a distance of two hundred miles, had conquered the whole country between the Pyrenees and the Garonne, had passed six large and several smaller rivers," and had defeated a brave and experienced enemy on every occasion he ever encountered him. It is a fitting close "to this strange eventful history," that M. Thiers suppresses any mention of the battle of Toulouse-we presume, because it reflects great credit on Soult, and still greater on his illustrious antagonist! In taking leave of M. Thiers, we beg to reiterate our approval of the flow and rapidity of his narrative. He has also thrown some fresh light on several of the events detailed in this volume, especially on the diplomacy of Napoleon, and on the Revolution of 1814. But we are compelled to add, that neither in this nor in any other part of his work is he at the level of his great argument, perhaps the greatest in the history of the world. He is entirely blind to the awful majesty of the drama he has attempted to delineate. He writes as if this momentous scene, in which, amidst the shock of stirring events and the sound of half the world in conflict, we can trace Providence shaping His ends, were a stage to show off one nation and its chieftain. In dealing with political questions, he is indifferent to moral rules; and, in reference to his own country, he steadily adopts the dogma of the Athenian at Melos, rebuked by the solemn irony of Thucydides, "that might is the measure of the rights of nations." Finally, he is reckless in assertion, and careless of truth, whenever it shocks his prejudices or vanity; and although he tells us solemnly, in a part of his work, "that he entertains such a respect for the mission of History, that the fear of alleging what is inaccurate fills him with confusion," we own that this sally strongly reminds us of Lady Blarney's Eulogies on Virtue. On the whole, the character of this work is this: Κακοῦ δὲ χαλκοῦ τρόπον Imaginative Literature. 165 ART. VII.-Imaginative Literature. The Author of Adam Bede and Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is expedient to examine occasionally the more striking products of our romance literature. Many of our ablest writers seem to find the dramatic form most congenial to their own tastes, and best adapted to convey their convictions on morals, politics, and theology-on arts, science, and letters, to the public. The novel is unquestionably a marked and characteristic form of the literary activity of this century. For this, if for no other reason, the critic is bound not to neglect it. But we confess that other motives induce us at intervals to undertake such a review. There are many questions of social concernment which lie apart from politics, philosophy, theology, and the larger questions of national life. These cannot be more conveniently discussed than in connection with the literature which undertakes to represent them as they work themselves out among us. To attempt to solve, or at least to adjust, some of the more subtle and knotty problems in practical ethics, which meet us at every step we take, is a task that ought not to prove unprofitable. We can all repeat the ten commandments. Few of us are sinners on a large scale; thieves and murderers will not return a parliamentary representative until "minorities" are enfranchised; but the minor moralities-the charities, and graces, and courtesies which sweeten life-are little understood, and habitually neglected. Many people appear to suppose that the imagination is a faculty which necessarily manifests in its operations a certain falseness. One man has common sense, another has imagination. The one sees things as they are, the other sees things as they are not. Such is the current phraseology ;-the fact being, that the man whose imagination is most intense and exalted, is the man whose impressions of things are, in general, the most truthful and exact. Doubtless, there is a grain of truth in the popular view. The imagination in different men works under different laws. The more powerful intellects keep it in subjection, but it takes the feebler captive. In the one case, it vitalizes and exalts; in the other, it discolours and exaggerates. The author of Adam Bede represents the first class; Nathaniel Hawthorne, the second. Our The second class is, undoubtedly, the more numerous. planet is seldom visited by a Cervantes, a Shakespeare, or a Goethe,-men, in whom this mental equilibrium, this balance of the faculties, is perfectly preserved. The minor poet or dramatist is tyrannized over by his imagination. It draws into its vortex the shifting phases of human life, the versatile motives of human action; and when they emerge, they bear the impress of the violent but monotonous energies which have been at work upon them. Such an imagination is never at rest; as on a windy sea the shadow cannot settle unbroken upon its surface. But in the stiller and more perfect places of the imagination, such agitation is unknown. The eyes are undimmed by tears, the hand does not tremble with the weakness of passion, the serene tolerance of the intellect is not disturbed by the floodtide of impetuous feeling. Among such men (or women) the author of Adam Bede may be reckoned. She can evolve "great actions and great passions;" but she dwells with equal complacency on the most trivial events, and the most frivolous careers. Vulgar and prosaic minds do not hurt her, they never sting her into indignation; she portrays their narrowness, their selfishness, their meanness, without resentment or contempt. With resolute patience, she accumulates every trait that can make the likeness more living; and when she has finished her work, she leaves it to tell its own story, pronouncing no verdict, passing no sentence, neither acquitting nor condemning. Only an artist, working in this supremely impartial spirit, could have drawn the Tullivers and Dodsons: "It is a sordid life, you say, this of the Tullivers and Dodsons— irradiated by no sublime principles, no romantic visions, no active, self-renouncing faith-moved by none of those wild, uncontrollable passions which create the dark shadows of misery and crime-without the primitive rough simplicity of wants, that hard submissive ill-paid toil, that child-like spelling-out of what nature has written, which gives its poetry to peasant life. Here, one has conventional worldly notions and habits without instruction and without polish-surely the most prosaic form of human life: proud respectability in a gig of unfashionable build: worldliness without side-dishes. Observing these people narrowly, even when the iron hand of misfortune has shaken them from their unquestioning hold on the world, one sees little trace of religion, still less of a distinctively Christian creed. Their belief in the Unseen, so far as it manifests itself at all, seems to be rather of a pagan kind; their moral notions, though held with strong tenacity, seem to have no standard beyond hereditary custom. You could not live among such people; you are stifled for want of an outlet towards something beautiful, great, or noble; you are irritated with these dull men and women, as a kind of population out of keeping with the earth on which they live-with this rich plain where the great river flows for ever onward, and links the small pulse of the old English town with the beatings of the world's mighty heart. A vigorous superstition, that lashes its gods or lashes its own back, seems to be more congruous with the mystery of the human lot, than the mental condition of these emmet-like Dodsons and Tullivers." 66 The Mill on the Floss. 167 Yet this subtle anatomist of the heart, whose spell evokes the most potent passions, does not hesitate to transfer literal and 'painful" likenesses of those drearily prosaic people to her canvas. To be able to do this as she has done it, necessitates a very special gift. The characters are prosaic, but a prosaic artist could not render them,-the affinity would prove fatal. They would emerge from the crucible disjointed and disfigured, entirely unrecognisable. The second-rate imagination, more engrossed, feebler, and less restrained, would fail also. Yearning after the true, the beautiful, and the good,-the poetry of life in its purest aspects,-things that are neither true, nor beautiful, nor good, but only mean, and dwarfed, and sordid, stir it into sharp protest, leave it irritated and aggrieved. As soon as it has uttered its protest it quits them, and retreats to a world of its own, where every object is seen through a poetic mirage, and from which all Tullivers and Dodsons are excluded. No such sharp pain, no such keen recoil, is felt by the author of Adam Bede. The sun shines and the rain falls upon the just and the unjust. The silver shield reflects, with tranquil fidelity, the boors who plough the fields, and the summer clouds which fleck the heaven. It is long since every English reader finished Adam Bede; upon it, therefore, we do not need to linger. The later work shows that the writer's power does not wane; and though deficient, perhaps, in the rapid interest, and untouched by the shifting lights and shadows of its predecessor, The Mill on the Floss is directed throughout by a finer and more consistent purpose. The humour is as genial and true,-nay, perhaps, truer,having, so to speak, less of glare in it. Mrs Poyser's sharp sayings and keen retorts were, as such, better probably than anything that the Dodsons or Tullivers utter. But the humour has become elevated and sustained,—a steady and constant light, manifested more in the conception of the characters themselves than in the words which they use. This is probably the finest form of humour, implying, as it does, a profounder insight into character than the ability to say smart things does; and with this humour the book overflows. But there is no want of point either; at times, the pervading and informing spirit blossoms into jest. Luke, the miller's man,-"subdued by a general mealiness, like an auricula,"-is painted in a single line. How good the sketch of Mr Pullet is! "Mr Pullet was a small man with a high nose, small twinkling eyes, and thin lips, in a fresh-looking suit of black, and a white cravat, that seemed to have been tied very tight on some higher principle than that of mere personal ease. He bore about the same relation to his tall, good-looking wife, with her balloon sleeves, abundant mantle, |