Text: C. F. Briggs (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), March 22, 1845, vol. 1, no. 12, p. ??

[page 177:]

REVIEWS.

EÖTHEN, or Traces of Travel brought Home from the East. No. 1, of Wiley & Putnam's Library of Choice Reading.

IF the days of “cheap and nasty” literature are not ended, we have proof before us that the day of cheap and elegant literature has at least dawned. Eöthen is the first of a series of reprints and original works, commenced by Wiley & Putnam, which is recommended by a novel elegance of form, and a tempting lowness of price. It argues little for the intelligence of our cheap publishers, that they should have allowed so attractive a work as Eöthen to escape their hands so long. Some of them have deluged the market with two shilling novels of every variety, Swedish, French, and English, since it appeared in England, but they have not thought it worth their while to offer it to the reading public; it shows very plainly their own want of intelligence or their want of faith in the intelligence of the people, the Native Americans, for whose benefit they publish their Countess Faustinas and Wandering Jews. The greater part of our publishers appear to have a singular taste in books: Scotch philosophy and French romance, watered with a pretty constant stream from Mr. James's pump, form the grand staple of their trade. good [[Good]] English works, excepting in the shape of historical novels, or novel-like histories, they carefully eschew, and were it not for the enterprise, or liberal daring of some of our publishers in Broadway, we should know nothing of many of the best books which are issued from the British press.

A gentleman asked one of the great publishers a few months since why they did not publish Dr. Arnold's life and correspondence? “Would you ruin us?” replied the sagacious book-dealer with a stare. But the Appletons have since done the public the service to publish this excellent work, and have risked the chance of ruin. Legally speaking, book-publishers have an unquestionable right to put forth only such books as they like, as a baker has an unquestionable right to sell nothing but sour bread, and we have no doubt that there are people all ready to snub us up, for pretending to insinuate that anybody, but especially publishers of books, should be called to account for doing what the law allows. We submit to the snub, merely begging the privilege of hinting that there are two kinds of law, the law of God, and the law of man, and that it is possible to break one While you observe the other.

Eöthen is a reprint of the most brilliant book of travels that has appeared in England since the time of Childe Harold. Teeming, as the English press does, with works on the East, the superior brilliancy of Eöthen has eclipsed them all. The author's name is not given, but he is known, as a matter of course, at home. The great marvel of his book is that it should have remained so long unpublished, and that the [column 2:] master of so fine a style and so lively an imagination should have kept his peace until now. It was nine years after his return from the East before his book was published; our travellers begin to publish the day after they leave home, and give us their sketches as they proceed.

Eöthen begins at Emlin. If the author did not speak as a man, we should think from the ease, the grace, the rapidity of the style, that Eöthen was the work of a woman, a better sort of Mrs. Gore or George Sand.

There is a vein of infidelity running through the book, but it is infidelity to conventionalisms and not to pure faith; it may frighten the timid or offend straight-laced moralists, but it will do no harm to the innocent and pure minded. It is just the work required to put into the hands of those who have overburdened their memories with the lifeless statistics of other travellers in the East. It puts life into the mummies that have been brought to us from the Orient, and puts words into the mouths of the mummies from whom we have been trying to gather knowledge of a country that we cannot visit. It is, indeed, what its name implies, the East, and we lay down the book half persuaded that we have in reality been mingling with the Osmanli and the Arab of the desert.

Our limits will permit us to make but a few short extracts, which will give an idea of the author's liveliness of fancy and elegance of style.

THE DELIGHTS OF FREEDOM.

“The course of the Jordan is from the north to the south, and in that direction, with very little of devious winding, it carries the shining waters of Galilee straight down into the solitudes of the Dead Sea. Speaking roughly, the river in that meridian, is a boundary between the people living under roofs, and the tented tribes that wander on the farther side. And so, as I went down in my way from Tiberias towards Jerusalem, along the western bank of the stream, my thinking all propended to the ancient world of herdsmen, and warriors, that lay so close over my bridle arm.

“If a man, and an Englishman, be not born of his mother with a natural Chiffney-bit in his mouth, there comes to him a time for loathing the wearisome ways of society — a time for not liking tamed people — a time for not dancing quadrilles —.not sitting in pews — a time for pretending that Milton, and Shelley, and all sorts of mere dead people, w re greater in death than the first Lord of the Treasury — a time in short for scoffing and railing — for speaking lightly of the very opera, and all our most cherished institutions. It is from nineteen to two or three and twenty perhaps, that this war of the man against men is like to be waged most sullenly. You are yet in this smiling England, but you find yourself wending away to the dark sides of her mountains, — climbing the dizzy crags, — exulting in the fellowship of mists and clouds. and watching the storms how they gather, or proving the mettle of your mare upon the broad and dreary downs, because that you feel congenially with the yet unparcelled earth. A little while you are free, and unlabelled, like the ground that you compass, but Civilisation is coming, and coming; you, and your much loved waste lands will be surely enclosed, and sooner, or later, you will be brought down to a state of utter usefulness — the ground will be curiously sliced into acres, and roods, and perches, and you, for all you sit so smartly in your saddle, you will be caught — you will be taken up from travel as a colt from grass, to be trained, and tired, and matched, and run. All this in time, but first come continental tours, and the moody longing for Eastern travel; the downs and moors of England can hold you no longer; with larger stride you burst away from these slips and patches of free land — you thread your path through the crowds of Europe, and at last on the banks of the Jordan, you joyfully know that you are upon the frontier of all accustomed respectabilities. There on the other side of the river (you can swim it with one arm), there reigns the people that will be like to put you to death for not being a vagrant for not being a robber, for not being armed, and houseless. There is comfort in that — health, comfort, and strength to one who is dying [page 178:] from very weariness of that poor, dear, middle-aged, deserving, accomplished, pedantic, and pains-taking governess Europe.

* * * * * * * *

“The Jordan is not a perfectly accurate boundary betwixt roofs and tents, for soon after passing the bridge I came upon a cluster of huts. Some time afterwards the guide, upon being closely questioned by my servants, confessed that the village which we had left behind was the last that we should see, but he declared that he knew a spot at which we should find an encampment of friendly Bedouins, who would receive me with all hospitality. I had long determined not to leave the East without seeing something of the wandering tribes, but I had looked forward to this as a pleasure to be found in the Desert between El Arish and Egypt — I had no idea that the Bedouins on the East of Jordan were accessible. My delight was so great at the near prospect of bread and salt in the tent of an Arab warrior, that I wilfully allowed my guide to mislead me; I saw that he was taking me out of the straight route towards Jerusalem, and was drawing me into the midst of the Bedouins, but the idea of his betraying me seemed (I know not why) so utterly absurd, that I could not entertain it for a moment; I fancied it possible that the fellow had taken me out of my route in order to attempt some little mercantile enterprise with the tribe for which he was seeking, and I was glad of the opportunity which I might thus gain of coining in contact with the wanderers.

“For the rest of the day we saw no human being; we pushed on eagerly- with the hope of coming up with the Bedouins before nightfall. Night came, and still we went on our way till about ten o’clock. Then came the thorough darkness of the night, and the weariness of our beasts (which had already done two good days’ journey in one) forced us to determine on corning to a stand-still. Upon the heights to the eastward we saw lights; these shone from the caves on the mountain-gide, inhabited, as the Nazarene told us, by rascals of a low sort — not real Bedouins — men whom we might frighten into harmlessness, but from whom there was no willing hospitality to be expected.

We heard at a little distance the brawling of a rivulet, and on the banks of this it was determined to establish our bivouac; we soon found the stream, and following its course for a few yards, came to a spot which was thought to be tit for our purpose. Is was a sharply cold night in February, and when I dismounted, I found myself standing upon some wet rank herbage, that promised ill for the comfort of our resting-place. I had bad hopes of a fire, for the pitchy darkness of the night was a great obstacle to a successful search for fuel. and besides, the boughs of trees or bushes would be so Bill of sap in this early spring, that they would not be easily persuaded to burn. However, we were not likely to submit to a dark and cold bivouac without an effort, and my fellows groped forward through the darkness, till after advancing a few paces, they were happily stopped by a complete barrier of dead prickly bushes. Before our swords could be drawn to reap this glorious harvest, it was found, to our surprise, that the precious fuel was already hewn, and strewed along the ground in a thick mass. A spot fit for the fire was found with some difficulty, for the earth was moist, and the grass high and rank. At last there was a clicking of flint and steel) and presently there stood out from darkness one of the tawny faces of my muleteers, bent down to near the ground, and suddenly lit up by the glowing of the spark, which he courted with a careful breath. Before long there was a particle of dry fibre, or leaf, that kindled to a tiny flame; then another was lit from that, and then another. Then small, crisp twigs, little bigger than bodkins, were laid athwart the growing fire. The swelling cheeks of the muleteer laid level with the earth, blew tenderly at first, and then more boldly upon the young flame, which was daintily nursed and fed, and fed more plentifully when it gained good strength. At last a whole armful of dry bushes was piled up over the fire, and presently with loud, cheery cracking and crackling, a royal tall blaze shc,t up from the earth, and showed me once more the shapes and takes of my men, and the dim utlines of the horses and mules that stood grazing hard by.”

A TEMPTATION TO COMMIT MURDER.

“And now it was, if I remember rightly, that Dtbemetri submitted tome a plan for putting to death the Nazarene, whose misguidance had been the cause of our difficulties. There was something fascinating in the suggestion, for the slaying of the guide was of course easy enough, and would look like an act of what politicians call “vigor.” If it were only to become known to my friends in England that 1 had calmly killed a fellow creature for taking nie out of my way, I might remain perfectly quiet and tranquil for all the rest of my days, quite free from the danger of being considered “slow;” I mignt ever after live upon my reputation like “single-speech Hamilton” in the last century, or “single sin —— “ in this, without being obliged to take the trouble of doing any more harm in the world. This was a great temptation to an indolent person, but the motive was not strengthened by any sincere feeling of auger with the Nazarene: whilst the question of his life and death was being debated, he was riding in front of our party, and there was somethiug in the anxious writhing of his supple limbs that seemed to express a sense of his false position, and struck me as highly comic; I had no crotchet at that lime against the punishment of the death, but 1 was unused to blood, and the proposed victim looked so thoroughly capable of enjoying life (if he could only get to the other side of the river), that I thought it would be hard for him to die, merely in order to give me a character for energy. Acting on the result of these considerations, and reserving to myself a free and unfettered discretion to have the poor villain shot at any fu. ture moment, I magnanimously decided that for the present he should live and not die.”

PLEAS IN JERUSALEM.

“Except at Jersusalem [[Jerusalem]], never think of attempting to sleep in a ‘holy city.’ Old Jews from all parts of the world go to lay their bones upon the sacred soil, and as these people never return to their homes, it follows that any domestic vermin which they may bring with them are likely to become permanently resident, so that the population is continually increasing. No recent census had been taken when I was at Tiberias, but I know that the congregation of fleas which attended at my church alone, must have been something enormous. It was a carnal, self-seeking congregation, wholly inattentive to the service which a as going on, and devoted to the one object of having my blood. The fleas of all nations were there. The snug, steady, importunate Hee from Holywell street — the pert, jumping ‘ puce’ from hungry France — the wary, watchful pules ‘ with his poisoned stiletto — the vengeful pulga’ of Castile with his ugly knife — the German floh’ with his knife and fork — insatiate — not rising from table — whole swarms from all the Rubbles, and Asiatic hordes unnum-bered — all these were there, and all rejoiced in one great international feast. I could no more defend myself against my enemies, than if I had been pain ii discretion’ in the hands of a French patriot, or English gold in the claws of a Pennsylvania Quaker. After passing a night like this, you are glad to pick up the wretched remains of your body, long, long before morning dawns. Your skin is scorched — your temples throb — your lips feel withered and dried — your burning eyeballs are screwed inwards against the brain. You have no hope but only in the saddle, and the freshness of the morning air.”