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Mrs Robinson's eager, partial, and injudicious friends, have misled and injured her; nor are we wholly free from the inconveniences which they have occasioned. The merits of Vancenza have so often met our eyes; it has been so often styled excellent, admirable; the world has been so frequently called on to confirm this suffrage with their plaudits, that we dare not hint a fault, or hesitate dislike. What we disapprove, we must speak of plainly, and, if our gallantry is called into question, the blame will fall on those who have compelled us to be explicit. After this introduction we need not say that we think this novel unworthy of the high reputation of its author, a reputation the source of which it is not our present business to examine.

In estimating the merits of Vancenza, it is not necessary, with all the formality of an Aristarchus, to lay down rules for the conduct of an epopeia of the familiar kind. It is enough that the plot be artfully involved and naturally unravelled, while each part co-operates to produce the event. In reality, nothing extraneous should be introduced, and each trifling episode should be remotely connected with the catastrophe. This, however, is a rule which must occasionally be dispensed with. Ornaments are often required in such works, and they cannot always be parts of one whole; nor should we have objected that the pilgrim's story, in the second volume of the novel before us, was an isolated appendage, if the slightest contrivance had not been sufficient to have connected it with the principal event, and to have explained the only part in which the denouement seems too artificial; - we mean the removal of the pictures to discover the fatal pannel [sic]. These are supposed to have hung there for many years, nor was it within the circle of expected contingencies, that they should be re-[269]moved in the life-time of Elvira: so that the whole of the history might be lost for ever, the prince Almanza might have married his sister, and their innocent progeny never known the crimes to which they owed their birth. In other respects the story is conducted with skill.

To the adventitious ornaments our censure must be chiefly directed. The language is in general highly and poetically laboured. It is refined into obscurity; and perspicuity of description is often sacrificed to a flowing period. There are many instances where, but from the future pages, it is difficult to discover the events in the blaze of description: a particular one now lies before us in the assassination of the count of Vancenza. The old observation may be well applied to Mrs Robinson: if you intended the language to be prose, it is too poetical; if to be poetry, it is very faulty. - But to the proof.

After passing an hour in restless rumination, the broad beams of light, penetrating through his curtains, roused him from his lethargy of thought: he started from his pillow feverish and dejected, and, scarcely knowing whither he bent his way, passed through the long gallery which opened to the terrace facing the lake. The sun diffused its most splendid glories over the grateful bosom of the humid earth: the wild fowl hovering over the glittering water, sweeping its lucid surface with their variegated wings: the soft music of the mountain breezes; the hollow sound of falling cascades; the distant precipice still hiding its blue head amidst the severing clouds that floated in feathery folds before the breath of morning; the flocks and herds bounding and frisking along the verdant openings on the side of the valley; the intermingling notes of woodland melody presented a picture so exquisitely sublime, that Del Vero, fascinated with delight, forgot for a moment even the graces of Elvira.

We need not point out that some of these epithets are unnecessary, some inconsistent, and some improper. In the next passage that we shall select, we find the earth decorated with gems: this may be; but these gems are also enamelled; nor are they in their usual situations. If we suppose too, that the gems so enamelled may be flowers, we must not imagine that they grow in the usual way: the enamelled gems at Vancenza are shook from the wings of summer, the wings are perfumed, and summer blushes: while the flowers are gems, the corn is of gold, the hills slope, and a vineyard is neither yellow nor black, but tawny. The whole, however, is too luxuriant for analysis.

It was in that delightful season of the year, when nature dis-[270]plays her richest foliage, and decorates the earth with a thousand enamelled gems, shook from the perfumed wings of blushing summer; the birds attuned their throats to the wild melodies of love: and the face of the creation glowed with exulting beauty; the vale was covered with sheaves of golden grain; and the sides of the sloping hills concealed by the rich mantle of the tawny vineyard: they passed through groves of citron and myrtle, intermingling with thick clusters of pomegranates, forming a perpetual alcove, through which the rays of the sun could scarcely penetrate! As evening advanced, the grey shadows of twilight stole over the valley; while the burning orb, retiring to its western canopy, cast a crimson lustre over the acute summits of the distant mountains.

Some of the metaphors are ludicrous or incorrect. 'The manners of the Spanish beauties, when compared with those of Elvira, sink into contempt as the twinkling of the glowworm fades before the orient day.' Again: 'true merit defies the honeyed tongue of flattery, as the diamond mocks the fire of the consuming crucible.' These are not solitary instances; yet we ought to add, that the metaphors are sometimes animated, sometimes elegant - 'Chastity exposed to the breath of slander is like the waxen model placed in the rays of a meridian sun: by degrees it loses its finest traits, till at length it becomes an insipid mass of useless deformity.' Again: 'Here he turned aside to wipe away the involuntary tear wrung from his bursting heart by the hard grasp of unrelenting conscience.'

Mrs Robinson's partiality for the ornamented language of poetry has led her also to employ it improperly, as in the following passage.

When the hand that writes, and the heart that dictates these lines, are freezing on the dreary pallet of the grave; when the faint traces of my sorrows shall fade before the obliterating wing of time; perchance some kindred eye may drop the last commiserating tear, and wash out the remembrance of my woes for ever.

Polished and figurative language like this is the production of a mind at ease; and the passage we have quoted is written in a moment of the most poignant agony, at a time when the tears flowing, had, in a great degree, defaced the manuscript, and the passage was, on that account, 'with difficulty decyphered [sic].'

Elvira, at the age of fifteen, is described as in 'the noon of cultivated youth;' and we find, in these volumes, the true criterion, we have formerly noticed, of a female pen, the indiscriminate use of the epithet 'fine.' No milliner's apprentice [271] scrawls a love-scene without introducing her hero as a man of fine sense, fine accomplishments, as well as fine eyes. Mrs Robinson should have avoided it; but she has 'fine passions,' 'a fine sense of honour,' 'fine accomplishments,' &c. The female author is conspicuous in other circumstances. After the death of the heroine, she stays to tell us that prince Almanza was chief mourner; at the revival of Almanza from his insensibility, into which he had fallen in consequence of the accident in hunting the wild boar, he addresses Elvira with all the rapture of Aimwell, declaring himself in elysium and the object of his attention an angel: this we suppose the ladies may consider as 'quite in nature;' but we are too old to join in the opinion.

There are some other errors perhaps more important, if the young ladies, in their rapid glances over these enchanting volumes, can be for a moment supposed capable of imbibing information. - In the beginning of the second volume, we have a description of an almost Lapland winter in Spain, while the more tender plants are placed in the same spot. We know that snow sometimes falls even in this climate; and that, on the mountains, it is permanent. But such violent storms in the vallies which defend the citrons are scarcely ever seen. The Spanish ladies, in general, are represented as courting admiration, instead of the secluded modesty, or more natural reserve, with which travellers have decorated them. Indeed the ladies, if we except the marchioness and Elvira, are of our metropolis; and the heroes differ but in titles from fashionable Englishmen. There is one circumstance which we have professed always to treat with indignation - viz. every attempt to gloss over the follies of popery, or to represent its absurdities as sacred. The pilgrim does penance for crimes. He had stolen a young woman from a convent, and, in his own defence, killed her brother. The latter could not be a crime: is it for the former then that 'Conscience wrings the tear from his bursting heart?' The crime is their's [sic] who, from motives of avarice or ambition, could counteract the designs of providence by the seclusion of helpless, reluctant, females. If our casuistry has any credit, we do not hesitate in declaring, that the rescuing one of these is an action that might atone for many sins: but we forget - we are relapsing into one of the tenets of the religion we have reprobated.

We have hinted at the principal faults which occur to our notice in this work, and they are such as we think confirm the opinion given in the beginning of this article. It is with reluctance that we have engaged in this disquisition; but whatever may be the splendor of a name, we have never scrupled offer-[272]ing our opinion. The public will ultimately decide, and to their supreme tribunal we leave the decision, scarcely apprehending that the judgment will be reversed. [complete]

Provided by Julie A. Shaffer, January 2000