Mrs Smith’s reputation as an author, rests less on her prose works, (which were frequently hastily written, in sickness and in sorrow,) than on her poetry. Her Sonnets and other Poems have passed through eleven editions, and have been translated into French and Italian; and so highly were her talents estimated, that, on the death of Dr Warton, she was requested to supply his epitaph, which she declined, though she could not but feel the value of such a compliment, from the members of a society so fertile in poets as Winchester College.
Mrs Smith left no posthumous works whatever. The sweepings of her closet were, without exception, committed to the flames. The novel published about three years ago, with her name affixed to it, with an intention of imposing it on the public as her work, is a fraud which, it seems, the law affords no redress for. Those who have looked into it, assure me there is sufficient evidence in the work itself to defeat the intention, and that no person of common sense can be deceived by it; but a more public exposure of such an imposition is required, in justice to Mrs Smith’s memory.
In closing this melancholy retrospection of a life so peculiarly and so invariably marked by adversity, it is impossible not to experience the keenest regret, that a being with a mind so highly gifted, a heart so alive to every warm and generous feeling; with beauty to delight, and virtues to attach all hearts; so formed herself for happiness, and so eminently qualified to dispense it to others, should have been, from her early youth, the devoted victim of folly, vice, and injustice! Who but must contrast her miserable destiny with the brilliant station she would have held in the world under happier circumstances? But her guardian angel slept!
* * *
WE have already observed, that our path through “this most pleasant land of faery” had been brought to an abrupt conclusion before the works of Mrs Smith had been included in the collection to which these notices refer. This has deprived us of the opportunity of reconsidering, with some care, the productions of an authoress, from whom we ought to acknowledge having received more pleasure than from others whom we have had an opportunity of reviewing in greater detail. Something, however, is due to the public; and though we write without having Mrs Smith’s works before us, and our recollections are of a distant date, yet they are too deeply impressed on our memory to be forgotten, and, though of a general character, we trust they will not be found vague or inaccurate.
We must, as a preliminary, take the liberty somewhat to differ from the obliging correspondent to whom we are so much indebted, where she considers Mrs Smith’s prose as much inferior to her poetry. We allow the great beauty of the sonnets, nor are we at all moved by the pedantic objection, that their structure, in two elegiac quatrains, terminated by a couplet, differs from that of the legitimate sonnet invented by the Italians, and imitated by Milton, and other English authors, from their literature. The quality of the poetry appears to us of much more importance than the structure of the verse; and the more simple model of Mrs Smiths sonnets is equally or better fitted for the theme, generally melancholy and sentimental, which she loves to exercise her genius upon, than would have been the complicated and involved form of the regular Italian sonnet. But, while we allow high praise to the sweet and sad effusions of Mrs Smith’s muse, we cannot admit that by these alone she could ever have risen to the height of eminence which we are disposed to claim for her as authoress of her prose narratives. The elegance, the polish, the taste, and the feeling of this highly-gifted lady, may no doubt be traced in Mrs Charlotte Smith’s poetry. But for her invention, that highest property of genius, her knowledge of the human bosom, her power of natural description, her wit, and her satire, the reader must seek in her prose narratives.
We remember well the impression made on the public by the appearance of Emmeline, or the Orphan of the Castle, a tale of love and passion, happily conceived, and told in a most interesting manner. It contained a happy mixture of humour, and of bitter satire mingled with pathos, while the characters, both of sentiment and of manners, were sketched with a firmness of pencil, and liveliness of colouring, which belong to the highest branch of fictitious narrative. One fault, we well remember, struck us, and other young readers such as we then were. There is (or at least was, for it may have passed away since we experienced such sensations) a strain of chivalrous feeling in the mind of youth, which objects to all change and shadow of turning on the part of the hero and the heroine of the novel. As the favoured youth is expected to be
A knight of love, who never broke a row;
so the lady, on her side, must be not only true of promise, but, under every temptation, faithful to her first affection. So much is this the case, that we have not known any instance in which the heroine is made to pass through the purgatory of a previous marriage ere the end of the work assigned her to her first well-beloved, which has not, for that reason, given sore offence to the reader. Now Emmeline (completely justified, we acknowledge, in reason, and still more in prudence) breaks off her engagement with the fiery, high-spirited, but noble and generous Delamere, to attach herself to a certain Mr Godolphin, of whose merits we are indeed told much, but in whom we do not feel half so much interested as in poor Delamere; perhaps because we are acquainted with the faults as well as virtues of the last, and pity him for the misfortunes to which the authoress condemns him in partiality for her favourite.
It may be said by some, that this is a boarding-school objection. All we can answer is, that we felt it natural at the time when we read the book. It may be said, also, that passion, and sacrifices to passion, are a dangerous theme, when addressed to youth; yet we cannot help thinking that prudence, as it is in a distinguished manner the virtue, so it is in some sense the vice of the present time; and that there is little chance of Cupid, king of gods and men, recovering any very perilous share of his influence during an age in which selfishness is so predominant. It seems at least hard that the novelists of the present day should be amongst the first to uplift the heel against the poor little blind boy, who is naturally their tutelar deity; yet so generally has this been the case, as to recall the complaint of old D’Avenant;
“The press is now Love’s foe, Love’s foe,
They have seized on his arrows, his quiver, his bow;
They have shorn off his pinions, and fetter’d his feet,
Because he made way for lovers to meet.”
The Recluse of the Lake, though the love tale be less interesting, owing to a sort of fantastic romance attached to the hero Montgomery, is in other respects altogether fit to stand beside the Orphan of the Castle. The cold-hearted, yet coquettish woman of fashion, Lady Newenden, who becomes vicious out of mere ennui, is very well drawn, and so are the female horse-jockey and the brutal buck.
Mrs Smith’s powers of satire were great, but they seldom exhibit a playful or light character. Her experience had unfortunately led her to see life in its most melancholy features, so that follies, which form the jest of the fortunate, had to her been the source of disquiet and even distress. The characters we have just enumerated, with others to be found in her works, are so drawn as to be detested rather than laughed at; and at the sporting parson and some others less darkly shaded, we smile in scorn, but without sympathy. The perplexed circumstances in which her family affairs were placed, induced Mrs Smith to judge with severity the trustees who had the management of these matters; and the introduction of one or two legal characters (men of business, as they are called,) into her popular novels, left them little to congratulate themselves on having had to do with a lady whose pen wore so sharp a point. Even Mr Smith’s foibles did not escape. In spite of “awful rule and right supremacy,” we recognise him in the whimsical projector, who hoped to make a fortune by manuring his estate with old wigs. This satire may not have been uniformly well merited; for ladies who see sharply and fed keenly are desirous sometimes to arrive at their point, without passing through the forms which the law, rather than lawyers, throws in the way. A bitter excess of irritability will, however, be readily excused by those w
ho have read, in the preceding Memoir, the agitating, provoking, and distressing circumstances, in which Mrs Smith was involved during the greater part of her existence. Her literary life also had its own peculiar plagues, to the character of which she has borne sufficient testimony in one of her later novels. There is an admirable correspondence between a literary lady and some gentlemen of the trade, which illustrates the uncertainty and vexation to which the life of an author is subjected.
The chef-d’œuvre of Mrs Smith’s work is, according to our recollection, the Old Manor-House, especially the first part of the story, where the scene lies about the ancient mansion and its vicinity. Old Mrs Rayland is without a rival; a Queen Elizabeth in private life, jealous of her immediate dignities and possessions, and still more jealous of the power of bequeathing them. Her letter to Mr Somerive, in which she intimates rather than expresses her desire to keep young Orlando at the Hall, while she is so careful to avoid committing herself by any direct expression of her intentions with respect to him, is a master-piece of diplomacy, equal to what she of Tudor could have composed on a similar occasion. The love of the young people thrown together so naturally, its innocence and purity, and the sort of perils with which they are beset, cannot fail deeply to interest all those who are interested by this peculiar species of literature. The unexpected interview with Jonas the smuggler, furnishes an opportunity for varying the tale with a fine scene of natural terror, drawn with a masterly hand.
In the Old Manor-House there are also some excellent sketches of description; but such are indeed to be found in all Mrs Smith’s works; and it is remarkable that the sea-coast scenery of Dorset and Devon, with which she must have been familiar, is scarce painted with more accuracy of description, than the tower upon a rugged headland on the coast of Caithness, which she could only become acquainted with by report. So readily does the plastic power of genius weave into a wreath materials, whether collected by the artist or by other hands. It may be remarked, that Mrs Smith not only preserves in her landscapes the truth and precision of a painter, but that they sometimes evince marks of her own favourite pursuits and studies. The plants and flowers are described by their Linnæan names, as well as by their vulgar epithets; and in speaking of the denizens of air, the terms of natural history are often introduced. Something like this may be observed in Mr Crabbe’s poems; but neither in these nor in Mrs Smith’s novels does it strike the reader that there is pedantry in such details; an objection which certainly would occur, were such scientific ornaments to be used by a meaner hand.
The most deficient part of Mrs Smith’s novels, is unquestionably the plot, or narrative, which, in general, bears the appearance of having been hastily run up, as the phrase goes, without much attention to probability or accuracy of combination. This was not owing to any deficiency in invention; for when Charlotte Smith had leisure, and chose to employ it to the purpose, her story, as in the Orphan of the Castle, is conducted with unexceptionable ingenuity. But she was too often summoned to her literary labours by the inexorable voice of necessity, which obliged her to write for the daily supply of the press, without having previously adjusted, perhaps without having even rough-hewn the course of incidents which she intended to detail. Hence the hurry and want of connexion which may be observed in some of her stories, and hence, too, instances, in which we can see that the character of the tale has changed while it was yet in the author’s imagination, and has in the end become different from what she herself had originally proposed. This is apt to arise either from the author having forgotten the thread of the story, or her having, in the progress of the narrative, found it more difficult to disentangle it skilfully than her first concoction of the tale had induced her to hope. This desertion of the story is, no doubt, an imperfection; for few of the merits which a novel usually boasts are to be preferred to an interesting and well-arranged story. But then this merit, however great, has never been considered as indispensable to fictitious narrative. On the contrary, in many of the best specimens of that class of composition — Gil Blas, for example, Peregrine Pickle, Roderick Random, and many others of the first eminence — no effort whatever is made to attain the praise belonging to a compact system of adventures, in which the volumes which succeed the first, like the months of summer maturing the flowers and fruit which have germinated in spring. slowly conduct the tale to the maturity at which it arrives upon its conclusion, as autumn gathers in the produce of the year. On the contrary, the adventures, however delightful in themselves, are but
Like orient pearls at random strung,
and are not connected together, otherwise than as having occurred to one individual, and in the course of one man’s life. In fine, whatever may be the vote of the severer critics, we are afraid that many of the labourers in this walk of literature will conclude with Bayes, by asking, “What is the use of the plot but to bring in fine things?” And, truly, if the fine things really deserve the name, we think there is pedantry in censuring the works where they occur, merely because productions of genius are not also adorned with a regularity of conception, carrying skilfully forward the conclusion of the stray, which we may safely pronounce one of the rarest attainments of art.
The characters of Mrs Smith are conceived with truth and force, though we do not recollect any one which bears the stamp of actual novelty; and indeed, an effort at introducing such, unless the author is powerfully gifted with the inventive faculty, is more likely to produce monsters than models of composition. She is uniformly happy in supplying them with language fitted to their station in life; nor are there many dialogues to be found which are at once so entertaining, and approach so nearly to truth and reality. The evanescent tone of the highest fashionable society is not easily caught, nor perhaps is it desirable it should be, considering the care which is taken in these elevated regions to deprive conversation of everything approaching to the emphasis of passion, or even of serious interest But of every other species of dialogue, from the higher to the lower classes of her countrymen, Mrs Smith’s works exhibit happy specimens; and her portraits of foreigners, owing to her long residence abroad are not less striking than those of Britons.
There is yet another attribute of Mrs Smith’s fictitious narratives, which may be a recommendation, or the contrary, as it affects readers of various temperaments, or the same reader in a different mood of mind. We allude to the general tone of melancholy which pervades her composition, and of which every one who has read the preceding Memoir can no longer be at a loss to assign the cause. The conclusions of her novels, it is true, are generally fortunate, and she has spared her readers who have probably enough arising out of their own concerns to make them anxious and unhappy, the uncomfortable feeling of having wasted their hour of leisure upon making themselves yet more sad and uncomfortable than before, by the unpleasant conclusion of a tale which they had taken up for amusement. The sky, though it uniformly lours upon us through Mrs Smith’s narrations, breaks forth on the conclusion, and cheers the scene when we are about to part from it. Still, however, we long for a few sunny glimpses to enliven the landscape in the course of the story, and with these we are rarely supplied; so that the general influence of melancholy can scarce be removed by the assurance, that our favourites are at length married and prosperous. The hasty and happy catastrophe seems so inconsistent with the uniform persecutions of Fortune, through the course of the stray, that we cannot help doubting whether adversity had exhausted her vial, or whether she had not farther misfortunes in store for them after the curtain was dropped by the Authoress. Those who have few sorrows of their own, as Coleridge beautifully expresses it, love the tales which call forth a sympathy for which their own feelings give little occasion; while others, exhausted by the actual distresses of life, relish better those narratives which steal them from a sense of sorrow.
(Few sorrows hath she of her own,
My hope, my joy, my Genevieve;
She loves me best whene’er I sing
The songs that make her grieve.
>
LOVE.)
But every one, whether of sad or gay temperament, must regret that the tone of melancholy which pervades Mrs Smith’s compositions, was derived too surely from the circumstances and feelings of the amiable Authoress. We are indeed informed by Mrs Dorset that the natural temper of her sister was lively and playful; but it must be considered, that the works on which she was obliged, often reluctantly, to labour, were seldom undertaken from free choice. Nothing saddens the heart so much as that sort of literary labour which depends on the imagination, when it is undertaken unwillingly, and from a sense of compulsion. The galley-slave may sing when he is unchained, but it would be uncommon equanimity which could induce him to do so when he is actually bound to his oar. If there is a mental drudgery which lowers the spirits and lacerates the nerves, like the toil of the slave, it is that which is exacted by literary composition when the heart is not in unison with the work upon which the head is employed. Add to the unhappy author’s task, sickness, sorrow, or the pressure of unfavourable circumstances, and the labour of the bondsman becomes light in comparison.
Charlotte Smith- Collected Poetical Works Page 251