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history it relates, we think we can bear no more, and yet more is to be borne. Pelion is heaped on Ossa, and Ossa on Olympus. We climb Alp after Alp, until the horizon is seen blank, vacant, and limitless; and the head turns giddy, and the ground seems to fail under our feet.

This novel rests its claim on being a source of powerful and profound emotion. The elementary feelings of the human mind are exposed to view; and those who are accustomed to reason deeply on their origin and tendency will, perhaps, be the only persons who can sympathize, to the full extent, in the interest of the actions which are their result. But, founded on nature as they are, there is perhaps no reader, who can endure anything beside a new love-story, who will not feel a responsive string touched in his inmost soul. The sentiments are so affectionate and so innocent-the characters of the subordinate agents in this strange drama are clothed in the light of such a mild and gentle mind-the pictures of domestic manners are of the most simple and attaching character the pathos' is irresistible and deep. Nor are the crimes and malevolence of the single Being, though indeed withering and tremendous, the offspring of any unaccountable propensity to evil, but flow irresistibly from certain causes fully adequate to their production. They are the children, as it were, of Necessity and Human Nature. In this the direct moral of the book consists; and it is perhaps the most important, and of the most universal application, of any moral that can be enforced

1 In The Athenæum and The Shelley Papers the word father's occurs here instead of pathos. As father's barely makes sense, and pathos is

unquestionably the right word, there need be no hesitation in crediting Medwin with an error of transcription.

by example. Treat a person ill, and he will become wicked. Requite affection with scorn;-let one being be selected, for whatever cause, as the refuse of his kind -divide him, a social being, from society, and you impose upon him the irresistible obligations-malevolence and selfishness. It is thus that, too often in society, those who are best qualified to be its benefactors and its ornaments, are branded by some accident with scorn, and changed, by neglect and solitude of heart, into a scourge and a curse.

The Being in "Frankenstein" is, no doubt, a tremendous creature. It was impossible that he should not have received among men that treatment which led to the consequences of his being a social nature. He was an abortion and an anomaly; and though his mind was such as its first impressions framed it, affectionate and full of moral sensibility, yet the circumstances of his existence are so monstrous and uncommon, that, when the consequences of them became developed in action, his original goodness was gradually turned into inextinguishable misanthropy and revenge. The scene between the Being and the blind De Lacey in the cottage, is one of the most profound and extraordinary instances of pathos that we ever recollect. It is impossible to read this dialogue, and indeed many others of a somewhat similar character,—without feeling the heart suspend its pulsations with wonder, and the "tears stream down the cheeks." The encounter and argument between Frankenstein and the Being on the sea of ice, almost approaches, in effect, to the expostulation of Caleb Williams with Falkland. It reminds us, indeed, somewhat of the style and character of that admirable writer, to whom the

author has dedicated his work, and whose productions he seems to have studied.

There is only one instance, however, in which we detect the least approach to imitation; and that is the conduct of the incident of Frankenstein's landing in Ireland. The general character of the tale, indeed, resembles nothing that ever preceded it. After the death of Elizabeth, the story, like a stream which grows at once more rapid and profound as it proceeds, assumes an irresistible solemnity, and the magnificent energy and swiftness of a tempest.

The churchyard scene, in which Frankenstein visits the tombs of his family, his quitting Geneva, and his journey through Tartary to the shores of the Frozen Ocean, resemble at once the terrible reanimation of a corpse and the supernatural career of a spirit. The scene in the cabin of Walton's ship-the more than mortal enthusiasm and grandeur of the Being's speech over the dead body of his victim-is an exhibition of intellectual and imaginative power, which we think the reader will acknowledge has seldom been surpassed.

ON PEACOCK'S "RHODODAPHNE."

[In writing to Peacock on the 20th of April, 1818, Shelley says, "You tell me nothing of Rhododaphne, a book from which, I confess, I expected extraordinary success." Mr. Rossetti (Poetical Works, 1878, Vol. I, page 150) mentions as a minor work of 1818 "now perhaps lost, a criticism by Shelley of that poem; and I presume it was written in the early part of the year. It seems to have been meant for a newspaper or magazine article, and sent to Leigh Hunt, among whose papers it was found by Mr. Townshend Mayer-not, unfortunately, quite complete. It was either dictated to or transcribed by Mrs. Shelley; but the MS., mainly in her writing, has been carefully revised and interpolated by Shelley. It is headed, in review fashion, Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell: a Poem-Hookhams. The book, though published anonymously in 1818, is acknowledged in the Collected Works of Thomas Love Peacock, published in 1875, in three volumes, by Messrs. R. Bentley & Sons.-H. B. F.]

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