PROGRESS OF PUBLICATION.
MR.COLBURN has just sent to us, but about a month or two after publication, his Violet, or the Dansease ; whose freshness is now
faded. However, we have looked at it, and will state our conclu- sions in brief.
The subjects are of two kinds : one, consisting of sentiment, seduction, and suicide—invented; another, description of the cha- racters and manners of dancers, fiddlers, singers, players, pushing artists, and men of family of equivocal reputation—the " light weights of society," as the author happily calls them—who are copied from life, and very well done. The evening parties are good ; the scheming mother and daughter, and the hate of the rival dancers, are capital ; so is the trip " down the River; " and the green boy aristocrat, shy island awed by " the lady who acted at Covent Garden Theatre," (by the by, he could not have been there,) is a felicitous bit. We suppose it is to be inferred that the author is a man of fashion ; which he may or may not be. It is evident he is an amateur or professional hanger-on of the Opera.
Some learning, says HORACE WALPOLE, is necessary to write a romance. It would seem that some science is now-a-days need- ful even for a fashionable novelist. The character of Violet, the nonpareil of opera-dancers, would have been more affecting had it been physically possible. But, if our author had consulted any of his friends in the corps de ballet, he would have learned that no one can be a first-rate dancer who has passed life in a convent till fairly in or pretty well out of the teens. Saying nothing of other things, the ankles would be too set to accomplish the first position properly.
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