24 OCTOBER 1829, Page 10

LETTERS FROM A RECLUSE.

NO.

READING, as you may suppose, is my great resource ; and-I read much,—a, box a week (Circulating Library measure) at a moderate calculation : but the reputation of your poplar writ :,rs often sorely perplexes me ; and I am at a loss to determine whether the cause he my own dulness, or the public's over estimate. Knowing me, as you do, my friend, you will unhesitatingly say my dulness ; but on that head I must have my doubts, till I have stated the difficulties that occur to me, and had explanations which may show them to be the growth of my solitary stupidity. I would begin with COOPER, the American SCOTT as he is styled, who has just published a new novel. The popularity of this writer is to me a thing incomprehensible. SCOTT is minute in his descriptions, with the design of producing the effect of vraisentblance. COOPER observes this machinery, and instead of making it instrumental, he converts it into the material of his works. Disproportion is his eha- racanislic—ordinary circumstances, and extraordinary qualities. His characters do not tell by their effect on the reader, but by the attri- butes which he the author- laboriously explains to imiong to them. There is as much difference between a good novel of Scorr's and the best of Cooniut's, as there is between a well-acted drama and a corn- 111011 puppet-show. In the latter we see that the person :lees are be- dizened blocks of wood, or tawdry and stuffing ; but the showman's siamell supplies all the deficiency, and sets them forth as beings of rare mei:Ales, and most extraordinary action. According to the fashion of giving names, such as the Sill'e'r Fork School, th6 Pretendcf.s, School, the Cockney School, Coorsat's should be styled the Hocas-Poca8 School. A "now-you-shall-see-what-you-shall-see" manner pervades all his romances.

But it is objected, " He is so natural !" My reading of natural is, however, circumstantial. He describes common operations with inordinate prolixity and minuteness ; and there is no interval between his creeping over facts like a snail, or soaring to the seventh heaven of extravagant imagination. We may, it is true, see the same thing differently from our different positions. If I may believe B/aclornol, many simple phenomena of nature are wonders to you, gentlemen in London; which is, I infer, grown to such a size that the country is placed beyond your reach, and rendered a province of the imagination. This circumstance may serve to make COOPER fine. To persons who have never seen a turkey except on the spit, the dinner-table, or in a poulterer's shop, I can conceive an interest in that grand scene of COOPERS (in the Spy, if I recollect aright) where he describes, at the length of some thirty pages, the operation of shooting one of these birds. The reader learns what sort of man was the gunner, and low lie fired his gun, extending the left arms along the barrel, drawing back the right leg, advancing a little the left, closing the right eve, pulling the trigger with the -fore-linger of the right hand, Sec. All this, and more of the same sort, may be mighty interesting to people out of the way of guns and birds ; and even my naked copy of the description may, in that view, have a beauty of which I have myself no perception. If such be the fact, tell me so frankly, my friend, and I will irahrd you more of the same quality. It may be that the operation of diewing a carrot out of the earth would be interesting to persons habitatine in vast cities, where vegetables are only seen in. markets. Shall I then set forth the proportions, tapering, and colour of the root ? Shall I explain that it does not spire upwards like a church-steeple, but strike down into the earth ? Shall I graphic* paint its green fringing tufts, and show how we proceed with it when

extracting the vegetable from the parent soil, for wedlock with boiled beef. But above all, shall I hold forth on the material and fashion

of the dibber ? Shall I show how the carrot-drawing man thrusts it under the root with his right hand, to loosen the soil, bending his dexter knee to the earth, and grasping carefully the green head with his left palm ; his eyes fixed upon the vegetable, and a sharp, intense, earnest expression of round-of-beef irradiating his countenance, and giving the dignity of assured dinner tb the form of carnivorous man? That last sentence is, I flatter myself, in the true COOPER style,— round and empty, of more sound than work.

Speak the word, then, if fine circumstantial descriptions of things. common to us, and strange to you, will be acceptable.

The popularity of COOPER'S sea descriptions would encourage me to entertain the above opinion. Some of them are really of great merit,—such as that in the Pilot, where the ship is clawing-off shore in a gale of wind, and her weathering a headland depends on her set- ting another sail, which she is hardly able to carry. Though I read the scene years ago, I have vividly fresh in my mind, the loosing the main course, the momentary sharp fluttering roar of it while sbeetina borne, the list of the ship to the strong wind on the broad sail, the weatherly power obtained, and new life with which the gallant frigate buffets the surge. This is a perfect sea picture ; but there is incident as well as description in it, and the description is necessary to the in- cident. The fault to which I object in other places, is description de- pending for interest merely on the strangeness of the thing described— common nautical operations particularized with vast pomp, which people must read with a pleasure similar to that of the farmer's relish for Latin—" Not" said he, " that I understand what it means, but I like the sound." To persons who have any idea of nautical matters, these expositions are as dull as an elaborate account of the method of driving a pair of horses through the streets of London would be to you. How should you like to be informed how the coachman sits on his box, how he holds the reins, and flourishes the whip, together with copious mention of off and near, throat-lashes, head-stalls, winkers, and traces. To Venetians, a COOPER might make the conduct of a hackney-coach something sublime and wonderful; and the Jarvey cha- racter might be raised to a mystical grandeur. The writer must not venture, however, to draw Jehus with as bold a deviation from nature as COOPER draws seamen. If he tells Venetians that the beau ideal of Jarvies has no happiness but in sitting on his box, they will be apt, from all analogies, to disbelieve him.