JOHN GODFREY'S FORTUNES.*
Mn. BAYARD TAYLOR has many of the qualites of a true artist,— simplicity of taste, a keen sense of the characteristic, a quiet style, a dislike both of too much colour and of time chiaro'-scuro manner, in other words, a preference for sketching by degrees of light rather than in black shadows or dazzling colours. He has, too, a quick conception of sudden movements of passion, a wide experi- ence, a genuine humour, and a manly pathos,—and yet with all • John Godfrey's Fortuna, Related by Himself. By Bayard Taylor, Author of "Hannah Thur.ton," de. London: Sampson Law.
these good qualities he has not sufficient respect for his own standard as an artist. Partly, wo think, through hurry, partly
through want of foresight in time choice of his design, he has allowed a tale of great promise and beauty to degenerate into something like melodrama, and end like a common-place and characterless sentimental novel.
Mr. Taylor has unfortunately chosen a somewhat straggling plot. Nothing is more difficult than to make a fictitious auto- biography the thread of a really good novel. There is laxity of fibre in the very conception of it. The changes through which character is supposed to pass in its period of growth and conden- sation are never easily reducible to a whole at all, least of all to an artistic whole. Even in the case of the simplest character they are too numerous and too complex to make a good story.
Such a story, too, to be a true work of art, requires that the reader should see everything through the eyes of the person whose autobiography.it is, and catch the temporary view which may happen to be most suitable to the momentary attitude of the mind thus in process of growth. Nothing is more difficult than to keep up this illusion with anything like success, and there is this peculiar delicacy about the attempt,—that if you succeed too well you may import all the false eentiment of an imma- ture mind without due correction into your art; and if you intro- duce the correction for the errors of observation and the refracting power of sentimental moods, you are in danger of confusing the point of sight from which the whole is painted. Mr. Bayard Taylor has conquered these difficulties with great success in the first and in most of the second volume of his tale. While be is painting the comparatively simple and external view of life taken by a child and an inexperienced youth, there is evidently present to his mind a definite scale of impression at once true to his assumed point of view, and beautiful in itself, by which to paint. The memory of his own childhood and youth probably aids him in time task, and no view of life is more really clear and beautiful, superficial as it may be, than that of a vivid observant childhood.
But when the struggles of early manhood begin, the autobio- graphic point of view is necessarily full of false and turbid mists. There is no unity or keeping in the conception of external life taken by a young man in the fermentation of his passions and sentiments, and no task can be more difficult than to give both an artistic view of an inartistic thing—the yeasty period of character—and yet such a view of the external world seen through it as shall be in any way appropriate to the point of sight without being wholly false in fact. And here Mr. Bayard Taylor seems to us to fail in both respects. He does not paint with sufficient force and intensity the clouded interior of his autobiographer's character ; he shrinks from giving the perspective truly as it would be Ban through his eyes ; he does not bring the magnifying glass of his hero's fermenting vanities and ambitions to bear closely enough upon the principal figures and events of his life ; be does not give adequately their engrossing effect. And yet he permits his picture to be clouded and confused by them without sufficiently hinting the falsehood of the point of view. The foolish sentimen- talism and excitements of John Godfrey infect the art without the artistic excuse being put boldly forward. We confound Mr.
Bayard Taylor's painting with Mr. John Gadfrey's feelings, and do not know where the exaggeration is intended to express an excited state of mind, and where it indicates a false tone in the artist. To look at life through the fermentation of such a mind is like looking at it through smoked glass ; but Mr. Bayard Taylor neither gives us the consistent smoked-glass view, nor
the true view of the smoked-glass view, but a view through a dusty glass, which puzzles us how far we are reading the view of the author and how far that of the author's fictitious hero. • The first volume, in which we have the hero's childhood, is full of clear, light, transparent sketches, full too of humour, and a
genuine artistic pathos. The sketches of the Pennsylvanian village life of the child with his mother, of his school experience, of his mother's death, of his apprenticeship to his uncle, and the religious revival in his uncle's church, of his literary ambitions, of his first start in life on his own account "to teach school," of the romping girl who wants him to make love to her and thereby frightens him out of his wits, and of the composed young lady who accepts his high-flown devotion with so sly an acquies- cence, are all clear, bright, and fascinating,. Especially the picture of the boy's poor mother, illiterate but whim the German touch of dreamy tenderness in her blood, her large black eyes, round face, and time oid-fashioned " puffs of hair" on the temples, which
when disturbed by agitation, or any other cause the child loves to replace, and of her death from cancer, is one of time most beau- tiful sketches we have read for a long time.
When Mr. Taylor gets his hero fairly embarked in literary life in New York the sketches become more blurred, and are less artistically welded together by the autobiographical form of the story. Dim figures of little interest are introduced almost with- out Outline, and the more brilliant scenes are somewhat irrelevant to the story,—being introduced more for their intrinsic humour or point than for their bearing on the principal character which is reaching its muddy stage. But some of these are still very clever and piquant,—one especially of a transcendental poetess being at least as good as any of the similar sketches in "Martin Chuzzlewhit";—
" Tell ma now, Mr. Godfrey,' said she, what is your usual process of composition ? I don't mean the fine frenzy, because all poets must have that, of course, but how do you write, and when do you find the combi- nation of influences most favourable ? It is a subject which interests me greatly; my own temperament is so peculiar. Indeed, I have found no one upon whom the Inspiration seizes with such power. Does it visit you in the garish light of day, or only awake beneath the stars? Must you wear a loose dressing-gown, like Mr. Danforth, or is your Muse not impeded by the restraints of dress?' I am really unable to say,' I answered. I have always been in the habit of writing whenever I felt that I had a good subject, whether by day or night.' 'How fortunate !' she exclaimed, how I envy you! Your physique enables you to do it, but with my sensitive frame it would be impossible. I feel the approach of inspiration in every nerve ;—my . husband often tells me that he knows beforehand when I am going to write, my eyes shine so. Then I go up stairs to my study, which is next to my bed-room. It always comes on about three o'clock in the afternoon, when the wind blows from the south. I change my dress, and pat on a long white gown, which I wear at no other time, take off my stays, and let my hair down my back. Then I prance up anddown the room as if I was possessed, and as the lines come to me I dash them on the black-board, one after another, and chant them in a loud voice. Sometimes I cover all four of the boards—both sides—before the inspiration leaves me. The frail body is overcome by the excitement of the soul, and at night my husband often finds me lying on the floor in the middle of the room, panting—panting !' She gave this informa- tion in so wild and excited a manner, flapping her hands up and down before her to illustrate the operation of prancing, hurling forth one arm, and making a convulsive, tremulous line in the air with her closed fingers when she came to dashing the words on the black- board, and panting so very literally at the close, that I began to be alarmed lest the inspiration was approaching. I looked at her head, and was re-assured on finding that the forget-me-note still crowned it, and that her hair was not coming down behind. I should think it must be very exhausting,' I ventured to remark.— ' Killing! she exclaimed, with energy. 'I am obliged to take res- toratives and stimulants after one of these visits. It wouldn't be safe for me to have a penknife in the room,—or a pair of scissors,—or a sharp paper-cutter,—while the frenzy is on me. I might injure myself before I knew it. But it would be a sweet, a fitting death. If it over comes Mr. Godfrey, you must write my thanatopsis !'—Hero Brandagee, sitting at the table with his back to us, startled 'es by bursting into the most violent laughter. Mrs. Yorkton evidently did not find the inter- ruption agreeable. What is the matter?' she asked, in a stiff voice. —' Oh,' said ho, these things of Mrs. Mallard. I have just been turning over the "Female Poets." The editor has given her ten pages. I wonder what she paid him ; there must have been an equivalent.'— ' Ten pages, indeed ejaculated Mrs. Yorkton, with bitterness, 'and barely three for me! That is the way literature is encouraged. How anybody can find the traces of inspiration in Mrs. Mallard's machinery —I won't call it poetry—I cannot comprehend. I am told, Mr. Brandagee, that she has become very spiteful, since my receptions have made a noise in the literary world.'—' I don't doubt it. Detraction and envy are the inevitable attendants of genius. But the eagle should not be annoyed at the hostile gyrations of the vulture.'—' What grand clashes of thought you strike out she cried, in an excess of delight and admiration. That image would close a sonnet so finely. If it should return to my mind hereafter, in some inspired moment, you will know whose hand planted the seeds of song."
The Mr. Brandagee mentioned in this paragraph is a literary Bohemian, whose conversation,—quick, rattling, full of real insight and vivacity,—is admirably sketched. But that is all ; the whole character of the man is never properly seen through his conversation, nor indicated by the author in any other 'way; the nameless fascination which he exerts over John Godfrey is not .explained, and he remains to the last rather a clever taunting voice than a man. But if Mr. Brandagee's character is only dimly expressed by his conversation, the style of which is never- theless defined and sparkling enough, the other figures which begin to crowd in in the third volume are still more faintly outlined. The young lady destined for the hero in the end is a mere walking model of firmness and amiable sentiment, nor is there any clear and satisfying drawing of any kind throughout the last volume. In one scene there is really a fine touch, which might, if properly worked out, have been made the centre of an episode of great power. It is when the hero, disappointed through calumny and misapprehensions in his lore, hears that his name has been falsely connected with that of an unfortunate whom he had saved from utter degradation, and in the anger of his heart, without either love for the girl or any motive but a sort of vague wish to set the world at defiance for its hard treatment of him, solicits her to make the false
calumny about them true instead of refuting it. There is a gleam of truth and power in the scene, but the whole delineation at this part had become so irredeemably confused and hasty that it was not within the author's power to restore it, and the one fine situation he had conceived soon fades away again into the general melodrama. Except where the story returns for a moment at the end to the old Evangelical uncle, the whole of the third volume is misty and weak. We regret this the more that the opening portion of it is so good,—painted with such a rapid, easy touch, and such light, clear colouring, that it will long remain in our memories, injured by an uneasy sense of its development into something formless and common-place. It is a fair dawn gradually darkening into a Scotch mist,—a bright May morning closing in a November fog.
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