Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), December 27, 1845, vol. 2, no. 25, p. ???, col. ?

[page 386, column 2, continued:]

Miscellanies, by WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT. New York: Harper & Brothers.

We said a few words, last week, of this admirable collection of essays, and now take the liberty of extracting some portion of the interesting paper on the genius of Brockden Brown:

The explication of the mysteries of Wieland naturally suggests the question how far an author is bound to explain the supernaturatities, if we may so call them, of his fictions; and whether it is not better, on the whole, to trust to the willing superstition and credulity of the reader (of which there is perhaps store enough in almost every bosom, at the present enlightened day even, for poetical purposes) than to attempt a solution on purely natural or mechanical principles. It was thought no harm for the ancients to bring the use of machinery into their epics, and a similar freedom was conceded to the old English dramatists, whose ghosts and witches were placed in the much more perilous predicament of being subjected to the scrutiny of the spectator, whose senses are not near so likely to be duped as the sensitive and excited imagination of the reader in his solitary chamber. It must be admitted, however, that the public of those days, when the

were admirably seasoned for the action of superstition in all forms, and furnished, therefore, a most enviable audience for the melodramatic artist, whether dramatist or romance-writer. But all this is changed. No witches ride the air now-a-days, and fairies no longer “dance their rounds by the pale moonlight,” as the worthy Bishop Corbet, indeed, lamented a century and a half ago.

Still it may be allowed, perhaps, if the scene is laid in some remote age or country, to borrow the ancient superstitions of the place and incorporate them into, or, at least, color the story with them, without shocking The well-bred prejudices of the modern reader. Sir Walter Scott has done this with good effect in more than one of his romances, as every one will readily call to mind. A fine example occurs in the Baden Glas apparition in Waverley, which the great novelist, far from attempting to explain on any philosophical principles, or even by an intimation of its being the mere creation of a feverish imagination, has left as he found it, trusting that the reader's poetic feeling will readily accommodate itself to the popular superstitions of the country he is depicting. This reserve on his part, indeed, arising from a truly poetic view of the subject, and an honest reliance on a similar spirit in his reader, has laid him open, with some matter-of-fact people, to the imputation of not being wholly untouched himself by the national superstitions. Yet how much would the whole scene have b.st in its permanent effect if the author had attempted an explanation of the apparition on the ground of an optical illusion not infrequent among the mountain mists of the Highlands, or any other of the ingenious solutions so readily at the command of the thorough-bred story-teller!

It must be acknowledged, however, that this way of solving the riddles of romance would hardly be admissible in a story drawn from familiar scenes and situations in modern life, and especially in our own country. The lights of education are flung too bright and broad over the land to allow any lurking-hole for the shadows of a twilight age. So much the worse for the poet and the novelist. Their province must now be confined to poor human nature, without meddling with the “Gorgons and chimeras dire” which floated through the bewildered brains of our forefathers, at least on the other aide of the water. At any rate, if a writer, in this broad sunshine, [page 387:] ventures on any sort of diablerie he is forced to explain it by all the thousand contrivances of trap-doors, secret passages, waxen images, and other make-shifts from the property-room of Mrs. Radcliffe and Company.

Brown, indeed, has resorted to a somewhat higher mode of elucidating his mysteries by a remarkable phenomenon of our nature. But the misfortune of all these attempts to account for the marvels of the story by natural or mechanical causes is, that they are very seldom satisfactory, or competent to their object. This is eminently the case with the ventriloquism in Wieland. Even where they are competent, it may be doubted whether the reader, who has suffered his credulous fancy to be entranced by the spell of the magician, will be gratified to learn, at the end, by what cheap mechanical contrivance he has been duped. However this may be, it is certain that a very unfavorable effect, in another respect, is produced on his mind, after he is made acquainted with the nature of the secret spring by which the machinery is played, more especially when one leading circumstance, like ventriloquism in Wieland, is made the master-key, as it were, by which all the mysteries are to be unlocked and opened at once. With this explanation at hand, it is extremely difficult to rise to that sensation of mysterious awe and apprehension on which so much of the sublimity and general effect of the narrative necessarily depends. Instead of such feelings, the only ones which can enable us to do full justice to the author's conceptions, we sometimes, on the contrary, may detect a smile lurking in the corner of the mouth, as we peruse scenes of positive power, from the contrast obviously suggested of the impotence of the apparatus and the portentous character of the results. The critic, therefore, possessed of the real key to the mysteries of the story, if he would do justice to his author's merits, must divest himself, as it were, of his previous knowledge, by fastening his attention on the results, to the exclusion of the insignificant means by which they are achieved. He will not always find this an easy matter.