TALES OF THE EARLY AGES
ARE the production of the author of Zillah; out of the studies preparatory to which work, they have probably sprung. They re- late to subjects of the first centuries of Christianity ; and show considerable familiarity with that interesting period of history. In long and sustained stories, we have sometimes complained that Mr. goalies SMITH wanted that vigour of imagination which can alone deeply interest us in an author's creations, and that his de- scriptions were generally overloaded with the results of his reading. Such objections do not lie against these Tales; which are of a kind not demanding so continued a stretch of the imagination, and re- quiring rather elegance of description, learning and taste, joined with a just perception of character. These qualities are eminently possessed by the author. His delineations of manners, and his narrative of historical events occasionally introduced, raise the Tales of the Early Ages above their class, and induce us to recommend them to tutors and parents, as companions to the histories of Jo- siPR us, TACITUS, the Lives of SUETONIns, and the modern works relative to the declension of the Roman power, and the convulsions which agitated its various nations ere the dissolution of its gigan- tic dominion.
The opening of the first tale is a pleasant and elegant piece of composition, in which the author takes a fanciful view of an author's power of creation and invention— Oh, how pleasant and piquant is the power of an author, and how dotli it lift its ecstatic possessor, when inspired by the divine afflatus of composition, above
the cares and control of the dull, plodding earth! Ubiquitous, and almost omni:- potent, he, he alone can realize the fantastical wish of the amorist, who ,called upon the Gods to " annihilate both space and time, and make two lovers happy." " The world is all before him where to choose ;" and what earthly autocrat so potent as the writer, whose dominions are uncircumscribed, who may range• even beyond the limits of reality, and who possesses a plenary power of life and death within the whole extent of his illimitable jurisdiction? After all, how- ever, the Promethean figures that he creates will remain inanimate, unless the, reader can vivify them with fire stolen from the heaven of his own imagination. Both parties must contribute to the vitality, or the efforts of the most vigorous fictionists will be abortive. Avaunt ! then, all ye phlegmatic and matter-of-fact souls, dull slaves to the visible and the tangible, who are content to browse upon the ignorant present. and to remain tethered to your corporeal teguments ; but hither come, ye nimble, quick-witted, and apprehensive spirits, who can escape. from the body as a bird from its cage, and when ye &spread your wings, can roam at will over the wilds of space, and track the backward stream of time- through all its dark meanderings.
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