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Art. V. The Libertine. By Charlotta Dacre, better known as Rosa Matilda, 4 vols. 12mo.
The painter who seeks the admiration of the crowd alone, bestows his chief attention upon vivid colouring and striking effect, desirous rather to seize the imagination by the boldness of his conception, than to satisfy the judgment, by the closeness of his designs from nature. Thus the writer, who would address the heart, and who has a moral purpose in view, should not, in his delineations of vice, exaggerate and overcharge the picture by unnatural representation; but tracing conscientiously and steadily its terrible consequences, aim rather to fortify the mind by a lesson of severe truth, than to astonish, without impressing it by the incongruous legends of romance.
There is so much good sense in these remarks, that we have been tempted to transcribe them, and, ushering in the novel, they afforded [668] an auspicious augury of its execution. But it is more easy for an author to prescribe for himself judicious rules of composition, than to adhere to them. Libertinism as the title indicates, is the vice here traced from its polluted source through all its wild and capricious meandrings; the noxious current, blasting whatever it meets with, and accumulating in its course, at length, with headlong fury, is itself precipitated into the gulph below.
Certainly if in the delineation of libertinism, Miss Dacre has not exaggerated and overcharged her picture, by unnatural representations, she has injured it by improbable ones. Instead of impressing upon fiction the air of truth, she has given to truth the garb of fiction.
The incidents of this story, as we have just observed, are far from being probable, nor are the characters always supported with consistency; but it has many striking scenes, and some few pathetic ones; the language, though sometimes ungrammatical, and often bombastic, is bold, stimulant, and energetic.
Concerning the last novel, which was thrown off from the rapid pen of this author, we had to remark, that the principal personages were courtezans of the lewdest class, and murderers of the deepest dye. In sketching the career of a libertine it is not likely that Miss Dacre should introduce her readers to a very moral society; the observation accordingly, if not true to the same extent, may yet in a mitigated tone be transferred to the present work. [complete]
Provided by Julie A. Shaffer, November 1999
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