Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 098.djvu/92

80 visible and the tangible; thought there were truths beyond the understanding and the senses, and not to be reached by ratiocination." In a periodical of his own, called the Idle Man, he published his novel of "Tom Thornton," which an able reviewer has pronounced "interesting," and written in a "style of earnestness which holds truth paramount even to taste, and refuses to adorn vice with a veil of beauty." This periodical ceased with the first volume, which did not pay its expenses, owing, it is said, to the absence of laws of protective copyright; and to this "cause defective" is attributed Mr. Dana's discouragement from the literary enterprises which otherwise he would have engaged in. However, by the testimony of Mr. Flint, the Idle Man has become as established a classic in the United States as the "Sketch Book" itself. To become a classic, by the way, is presumably identical with being "put on the shelf," which is a phrase with a Janus face. Few are the libraries where the classics don't want dusting. They are not, by popular interpretation, synonymous with what Charles Lamb called "readable books"—a title recently assumed by a London series, which thus, in its every advertisement, hints unutterable things as to the unreadability of rival issues.

Although evidently predisposed to poetiy of a meditative cast, and of soothing, "all serene" purpose, Mr. Dana's longest and best known effort is in quite a different key, and adventures the treatment of a dramatic theme, with "striking effects," in a suitably rapid and exciting manner. "The Buccaneer" is a legend connected with an island on the New England coast—the oral tradition itself being "added to," and "diminished from," by the poet, according to the supposed exigencies of his art. A murder at sea by a pirate, Matthew Lee by name, and a preternatural process of retribution, are the theme. The distinctive feature in the adjustment of the just recompense of reward, is the introduction of the White Horse, which was cast overboard after its mistress, and whose spectre is the agent of final suffering and penal woe to the reprobate seaman. A fear, half ribald jest, half shrinking apprehension, lest by some wild miracle the white steed should find utterance to reveal bloody secrets, just as in old, old times the diviner's ass had the sudden faculty of speech, constrains Lee to hurl him to the waves alive, and bid him ride them as he may. Then and there, the cry of the straggling brute is appalling to the ruffians on deck, as they watch his wrestlings with the yeasty waters—now sinking, now rearing upwards—"then drifts away: but through the night they hear far off that dreadful cry." To blot out the last vestige of crime, the ship itself is burnt; and the desperadoes settle down on the solitary island "of craggy rock and sandy bay," to enjoy the "much fine gold" for which they have sold ship, business, conscience, and peace. They try to drown reflection in jovial riot:

The anniversary of the crime comes round: the guilty revellers keep