Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 096.djvu/182

170 One salient objection meets the story of "Caleb Field" in limine; and that is, the incompatibility of its subject—a narrative of the great Plague—with the assumed province of art. The horrible, it is contended, is foreign to that province, and cannot, ought not, to be naturalised. Yet, whatever be the value of this doctrine à priori, authorship of the first class has so far set it aside as to choose subject physically repulsive, and invest them with strange interest, and make the mortal put on immortality, the corrupt, incorruption. We need but name Boccaccio, and Shelley, and Professor Wilson. The truth seems to be, that such subjects are only incompatible with the laws of art in fiction, or painting, and sculpture, when the physical is portrayed to the exclusion of the moral; when material horror absorbs the sense of mental energy, and over-rides the majesty of the human will. The opinion of some, that we have too much of Pain and Evil in actual life, and, therefore, may shun them in fiction, has been not unjustly controverted on the ground that this is to make Art a mere "amusement (i. e., an escape from the Muse), and to look on the terrible realities of life only as things to be endured," thus refusing to connect them with the "ideals of God, with the visions and ambitions of the soul." Our author is not the one to omit this religious element in any story of her weaving, least of all in one where God moves in so mysterious a way, and where the reader is called upon to stand between the living and the dead, and to behold a thousand fall beside him, and ten thousand at his right hand, victims of the pestilence that destroyeth at noon-day—which fanaticism personifies as a dreadful form with outstretched sword "gleaming like a diamond-stone," and his eyes "like fire gazing over the city, and his face terrible, and yet so fair, and his garments like a wondrous mist, with the sunshine below." Edith Field is the bright presence, with something of angelic light, amid the blackness of darkness; and the part she plays, and the tone given to the tale by her pervading spirit, distinguish it from previous fictions on the same theme—such as "Old St, Paul's," and "Sir Ralph Esher," and "Brambletye House."

We are not so sure as some of our "irritable race" that "Adam Græme" has enhanced and will enhance its author's reputation; though we acknowledge the beauty of holiness, the truthfulness and pathos, the faithful presentment of Scottish, life and manners, and the secret struggles of human suffering which here, as in all her writings, impress, interest, and instruct. Tenderness and simplicity are here, with ample power to chasten and subdue; passing into our "purer mind, with tranquil restoration," and breathing there the "still sad music of humanity." This we are "well pleased to recognise." But, on the other hand, it is neither very carefully nor completely written, and it reveals little novelty of character or incident. Probably it was written too fast—at any rate, with too much faith in the writer's hold on the public. A firm and kindly hold she has, and sorry we should be to see the grasp relaxed. New editions are not an infallible proof that critical croaking is superfluous.