COOPER ' S MERCEDES OF CASTILE.
MEncnnEs of Castile is a noble Spanish lady, a favourite of Queen Isabella, and attached to Don Luis de Bobadilla. Of a buoyant nature, and whilst jealous and doubtful of his lady's love, Don Luis has embarked in various roving sea-enterprises, which have procured him a character of unsteadiness. The Queen, who has penetrated the secret of Mercedes, and is anxious for her happiness, receives her promise that she will never marry without the royal consent ; and when the lovers have come to an understanding, Mercedes suggests to Luis, that he should embark in the enterprise of Colum- bus, wlio is at the Spanish court soliciting encouragement for his great discovery. By this means, the Queen will be flattered through her regard for Columbus; and if the voyage eventually succeed and the report of the Admiral be favourable as to Luis, he will have displayed a largeness of purpose in his adventures that will leave the Queen without excuse for withholding her consent. This conception is well adapted to favour the author's object of describing the character and career of Columbus; who is painted at the l.sginning of the tale as enduring the long delays of the Spanish court, and the imlifferent coatempt of the majority of the courtiers, till, stung with the neglect, he sets out for France. to otra services there. And in each phase of his fortune Don Luis is in attendance upon the great adventurer, upholding him against attack, and being the instrument by which he is recovered for Spain. The middle of the hook is devoted to the outward and homeward voyages of Columbus ; and the close to his triumphant reception by the court, whence he bad departed a suspected tin- postor or a pitied enthusiast. It will be seen at once that the romance is lost sight of' in his- tory. In the beginning, the lovers encounter no greater rubs than any middle-class damsel of our day whose heart is set upon a youth that her friends do not altogether approve of. For one half of the three volumes Luis is a mere satellite of Columbus, doing nothing but think of :11crecdes, and listen to the nautical expositions of the Admiral, which without him must have been made in soliloquy. A greater word interest is given to the concluding pages by means of at young Indian princess, whom Luis had rescued from a kind of Sabine ravishment, and brought to Europe—of course to fall in love with him ; and whilst the difficulties of the Spanish lovers, through this incident, are designed with skill and drawn without exaggeration, the character of Ozenta, in her guileless simplicity and deep ;direction, is painted with great delicacy and even pathos. Still this truthful and touching episode bears too small a relation to the whole work to endow aleceedes e?je CaRtile with the character of a well-wrought romance.
What is of greater consequence, the historical and nautical parts are not of a nature to inspire much beyond a jogtrot kind of inte• rest. The circumstances attending the actual voyage of Columbus surpass all that " fables yet have feigned or fistr conceived." In extent and danger it for exceeded the expedition of the Argonauts . or the wanderings of Ulysses nor could the genius of Homer, or of that ancient poet whose writings pass under the name of Orpheus,
invent a position of greater peril than the crews of Columbus were apparently placed in when the compass began to vary, the heat of the climate to act upon the vessels, and onward progress to. be
suspended by those sultry calms which occasionally occur; nor has " fear conceived" any condition more terrible than that which rose to the minds of the navigators, when they fancied that, far re- moved from all human help or sympathy, or even knowledge, they were doomed to drift without a guide in a wind-less sea till they perished of thirst and hunger, as a punishment for their presump- tion in attempting to pass the boundaries which the Almighty had set to the world. Truth, and such well-known truth, is not a fit subject for fiction : additions would be resented by the reader, and expansion would lessen the effect of the original. These are difficulties, too, which Mr. Cooi'aa is peculiarly unfitted to overcome. Possessing great powers of exact description, and a critical judgment harshly severe, he is quite devoid of imagination or poetical genius. Hence his pictures of the actual are long-drawn-out, and approach the tedious, even in his sea-scenes ; and his stories are rather commentary than narration or discourse. Ills persons say, not what they probably would say, but what under their circumstances it is judicious that they should say ; and his confessions of lovers sink down
into rational arguments on their situation. In the descrip- tions of nautical and Indian life, where we wish to learn something unknown, these qualities produce a fulness of information, that gene- rally counterbalances their length and elaboration ; and though they strip a story of much of its romantic interest, they prevent the fictions of Coons from becoming distorted by exaggeration or turgid absurdity. But his powers are evidently unfitted to introduce a voyage like that of Columbus into a fiction. His critical acumen and his nautical knowledge lessen the actual danger : he wants imagination to realize the true situation, and the terrors that might reasonably haunt the boldest minds on such an occasion ; even the accessories, though not badly done per se, 0111116h the effect. A couple of _sailors, one an enthusiast the other it veteran, partisans of Columbus, who take the office of spies and mob orators amongst the crew, rather tend to lower the Admiral into a scheming man- ager. Columbus himself is painted too " cock sure," as the vulgar have it, and turned into a kind of lecturer on navigatiou to Don Luis. The actual incidents of the voyage, the almost continual fears and dissatisfaction of the crew, the conspiracy to murder their chief, and at last their open mutiny, arc all lowered in the fiction. They seem too matter-of-filet, and with too little danger ; and are gut over by the sort of speech which a modern skipper might make to a crew grumbling about hard work or short allowance. The only exception is the stormy return passage ; but even this is merely an ill-equipped vessel struggling through a gale. We hear, indeed, of the anxiety of Columbus lest his discovery should perish; but we do not feel that the bark is carrying more than " Cretin and his fortunes." Perhaps the known result may have some influence upon the mind.
It must not be interred from these remarks that the work is heavy. On the contrary, it is readable enough ; abounds with matter, and with rational reflections on the spirit of the age, and with sonic judicious remarks on the voyage of Columbus ; but as a romance, it is what we have described. The fiction is subordinate to the history, and the history produces a greater effect in the nar- rative of the chronicler than in the pages of the novelist.
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