Text: Edgar Allan Poe (???), [Review of R. M. Bird's The Adventures of Robin Day], Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, June 1839, vol IV, no. 6, pp. 4:358

[page 358, continued:]

The Adventures of Robin Day. By the author of “Calavar,” “Nick of the Woods,” etc. Two Volumes. Lea and Blanchard, Philadelphia.

Prolific authors are frequently reduced to the necessity of repeating themselves — of giving a warmed-up hash of their best joints, trusting to some little difference in the cookery, some variety in the seasoning and tone of the same, to disguise the matter from their customers. Walter Scott was a painful evidence of this fact — his Meg Merrilies ran through several aliases, and always figured in his most hasty and immature productions. Boz delights in portraying fat, abrupt, rude old men, and Dr. Bird has given us another version of Roaring Ralph, in the person of Captain Hellcat, the hero of Robin Day's narration. Indeed, we have the Roarer in a two-fold capacity in the same volume, with the simple alteration of a name, merely — for Skipper Duck is a perfect counterpart to Captain Hellcat, and it is difficult to say which swears the loudest, or commits the most reprehensible actions.

It is well for Dr. Bird that his literary reputation is of that established basis that he can afford to put forth such a work as Robin Day — a publication that would ruin a parvenu, and drag down to the depths of perdition half a score of fledgling scribblers who have not such works as Calavar, The Hawks, and Nick of the Woods, to fall back upon, and exhibit as the standards of their reputations. There is neither originality in the conception, or novelty in the characters, or interest in the plot of Robin Day. A grossness of language and violation of the proprieties and probabilities of human nature characterize every chapter; the world never produced such a born as s as Robin Day, and the very worst state of society never impunibly allowed the doings of such infamous scoundrels as Hellcat and Duck.

Whilst fearlessly mentioning the heavy faults of this last production of a popular and powerful writer, we cheerfully bear witness to its excelling variety of incident which rapidly attracts the attention of the reader, and its occasional beauties of description, which make us the more regret the deficiencies already enumerated. The scene wherein Robin Day is made to personate an Indian magus, and the scoundrelly Captain ofiiciates as bear leader, is outrageously laughable and graphic — but its enjoyment is marred by the heteroclite stupidity of the narrator, and the continuance of the heartless villany of the concocter of the scheme.

The general reader will be apt to assimilate “ Boy Tom” with Smike in Nicholas Nickleby; and discover a vast resemblance in the sloop life of Tom and Robin to the aboard-barge days of Jacob Faithful.

If Doctor Bird, in the full possession of powers which, if fairly exercised, would entitle him to one of the highest places in the modern Parthenon, will scribble away his fame, and, anxious only to be considered as a ready and a voluminous writer, publish such unconsidered crudities as “ Robin Day,” he must not be annoyed at the severity of criticism which such carelessness of true fame will inevitably bring upon him. We are too proud of the talents of our fellow citizen, and too honestly jealous of his reputation, to allow him to commit such a suicidal act without a fitting and a due rebuke. Ten years hence, Dr. Bird will wish to cancel every copy extant of “The Adventures of Robin Day.”