The Sun.
London, England, 1847-12-22 00:00:00

I' .t.'.l" V ..;-; r.w.,

4

....A..
IXR. WARREN'S NEW WORK.

NOW AND THEN. By Samuel Warren.
Among the writers of fiction there are so;re
whose imaginations are as prolific as their language is
voluble. Stories pour from their portfolios with a
rapidity that has in it something of the marvellous.
They write a Christmas book while you are eating
your breakfast ; and a romance in three volumes
octavo while you are taking your constitutional walk
before dinner. They are as miraculous in supplying
copy to the printer, page after page, chapter after
chapter, book after book, :as Theodon used to be in
conjuring herbs, flowers, rabbits, fowls, gloves, and
jewellery out of a gentleman's hat. They are as in-
exhaustible as the purse of Fortunatus; they could
with their own pens compose a circulating library ;
they might, at a pinch, undertake to tell a succession
of tales as prolonged as those which the Vizier's
daughter related to the Sultan during One Thousand
and One Nights. England has a novelist like this—
Prance has a novelist like this : George Prince
Regent James is the one ; the other is Alexandre
Dumas, the Marquis de Pailleterie. Men who write so
much necessarily write a great deal that is frivo-
lous : upon the same principle that men who
are given much to talking are pretty sure to
talk a great deal of nonsense. The consolation is,
however, that this class, like every other, has its anti-
thesis. There are those who have acquired celebrity
by penning only a single work. Such an one was
Beckford, the Epicurean, whose solitary volume—
" Vathek "—(originally composed by him in the
French tongue)—has been called by Mr. Weber a
" sublime tale," and has induced Lord Byron to re-
mark, that not only must "Rasselas" " bow before
it," but that "for correctness of costume, beauty of
description, and power of imagination, it far sur-
passes all European imitations. Boswell, again,
wrote only one biography—but such a biography I
—the perfection of that kind of literature !—a book
which, in spite of the reviewer's contempt for the
author as the most egregious toadeater on record,
has compelled even Mr. Macaulay to express his
gratitude, and that, too, with all the emphasis of con-
scientious criticism. Gresset, if we mistake not, is in
like manner known only by his " Parrot"—a conceit
of inimitable drollery, and of exquisite originality.
Mr. Warren, however, is neither a mere manufac-
turer of volumes like Dumas or James, nor an author
of one isolated and attenuated effusion, like Gresset
or Beckford. His intellect has as little affinity for the
shrub which throws out fresh blossoms every hour, as it
has for the American aloe—blooming but once in a
hundred years. He has not frittered his genius away
with the prodigality of a feuilltonist, nor has he stul-
tified the auguries of his youth by the barrenness of
his invention. Whatever he has written, he has
written well. Without in any manner deteriorating
his reputation as a lawyer, he has acquired for him-
self a very wide fame in the world of imaginative
composition. He has burnt the lamp of research in
the labours of a very learned profession ; he has ob-
tained no little distinction in the discharge of his
duties as a barrister of the Inner Temple; he has ren-
dered himself more than noticeable as a student in
jurisprudence, and has become a legal authority of
no inconsiderable eminence. And yet, with all this,
be has found leisure to distinguish himself in a re-
markable manner among his literary contemporaries.
There are noble examples to be found in the career of
our author, as well as noble precepts in his writings.
As far as it is comprehensible through his public
achievements, both as a legal writer and as a writer
of fiction, his life constitutes a fine illustra-
tion to the preface of Sir Bulwer Lytton's
" Lucretia"—that superb preface which inculcates
the great truth that labour is happiness. Mr. Warren
has evidently cultivated his abilities in literature out
of a pure and spontaneous love for it. He has nar-
rated the imaginary vicissitudes and struggles of
imaginary persons, not so much because of his
ambition to figure in capital letters upon a title-page,
as from a pleasure in embodying his own reveries and
disseminating those loftier sentiments of morality
which are felt by him to be the presiding principles of
existence. This is sufficiently manifest in his two
celebrated works, " The Diary of a Late Physician"
and " Ten Thousand a Year." In the former how
many bewitching lessons of virtue are contained !
and how attractive the manner in which those lessons
are imparted! Who can ever lose a recollection of
that most touching, because most natural, portraiture
of womanly fortitude given in the story of " The
Cancer ?" Who, again, can ever forget the long-
suffering, and the resignation, and the longanimity,
an' the moral valour of Charles Aubrey, the hero of
" Ten Thousand a Year ?" It is in this com-
bination of purpose and interest that the true
merit of Mr. Warren's fictions, to our think-
ing, consists. They have all the dignity of
homilies, and all the fascinations of romance.
Without ever venturing into the labyrinth of po-
lemics, or presuming to meddle with the holier doc-
trines of theology, Mr. Warren, nevertheless, infuses

more religion inioa single chapter than the contro-
versial novelists could do into a score of volumes.
Beyond this, Mr. Warren unites in himself many of
the rarest qualifications of his art. He has a keen
perception of the ludicrous; witness his delineations
of Tittlebat Titmouse and the Tagrags. He has an
extraordinary and, in many respects, unequalled
skill in the complication and unravelment of a plot,
as is shown in the different schemes undertaken for
the acquisition of Yatton. He has a singular capa-
city for sketching scenery—for literally painting it
in language—as may be seen in his description of
that same estate, the prize of Titmouse and the pro-
perty of Aubrey, "dear old Yatton." In the delinea-
tions of character, moreover, Mr. Warren has a mar-
vellous ability. Cosily Gammon is as complete, as
substantial, as consistent, as minutely drawn, and as
actual in identity as the Sir -William Bran-
don of Sir Bulger Lytton, or as the Seth
Pecksniff of Mr. Dickens. In addition to these
numerous advantages, the two former productions of
our author display with peculiar vividness both the
excellences and the blemishes of his style and man-
ner. They evidence at once his rigidity, or rather
his formality, in grammatical construction, and the
strength and purity of his good old Saxon diction—a
diction which, in character, seems, as Lord Morpeth
said recently of the character of Caxton, to be " racy
of the soil of the wolds of Kent." In manner, how-

ever, Mr. Warren has not merely proved himself to
be capable of appreciating the grotesque and hu-
morous, he has evinced the utmost grace and refine-
ment of fancy (witness his Kate Aubrey, " beautiful
bate Aubrey"), the most powerful and passionate con-
ception of the horrible (witness his appalling tale of
the "Man about Town"), and the subtlest knowledge
of the sensibilities of the heart, even when on the

verge of death and in the agonies of despair (witness
the little incident which precedes the Fuicide of
Gammon, when the cat rubs against his boot). That
Mr. Warren's writings are anything but devoid of
pathos will be admitted by all those who have read
and wept over his most simple and most touching
story of "Consumption," or who have even perused
nothing of his beyond the paper entitled " A Slight
Cold." That his heart can beat with emotions of ten-

derness, is certain, from his narrative of " The Mother
and Son," and from that exquisite apostrophe in the
moonlight at Yatton, closing with the words—
" Sleep on, sweet Kate, sleep on, dreaming not of
dark days before thee, oh, that thou could sleep on
till the brightness returned !" If this sympathy for
What is most gentle arid affectionate in humanity
Were betrayed by nothing else in Mr. Warren's books
it would be by the beautiful dedications of " Ten
Thousand a Year," and of the work just published
" Now and Then"—to his children. There is some-
thing attractive in the simplicity of the arrangements
of the volume now lying before us for consideration
—a single volume, without preface, without any in-
troductory notice, without any table of contents
whatever, divided into nine chapters, and yet
extending over 527 pages ! The title-page is
I itself an evidence of this almost punctilious
" Now AND THEN—Through a glass
da.”hly." Without reading the book through, the
tnettning of this is enigmatical. But when read
through, the sense of those few words becomes trans-

p• Ix e ni, and the very sound of them beautiful.

" Now

w 2 ID ThEN—Through a glass darkly." And the
int erest of the work—beginning with the beginning,
arid only ending with " the end "—originates in a cir-
con istance as simple as the title-page. Adam
Ayl iffe, the younger, a day-labourer in the village of
rerstoke, is seized under circumstances of extra-
ordinary suspicion, having been observed near the
111 urilered body of Lord Alkmond in the wood of
Alilverstoke Castle, and chased to his cottage, where
he is captured with a bloody stick in his possession,
nd one of his sleeves bedabbled with gore. He is
tt ied, convicted, and sentenced to death for the wilful
under of the nob!eraan, and the i,iterest of the story
Itti.ses from the consciousness on the mind of the
rider that Ayliffe is altogether innocent of the crime
,ktcl
rnlatited to him, although the facts are so black
ist him as to justify the verdict of
;I'e j ury and the concurrence of the Lord Chief Jas-
e in the correctness of that verdict. The at-
woti on is rivetted to the narrative from an
ltwfu 1 uncertainty as to the fate of Adam Ayliffe,
and from a supreme solicitude for something or other
transpire which shall demonstrate beyond all doubt
guilt or innocence. In effect, the idea of the plot
merely the extension and elaboration of that cons-
Prised in a contribution written by the author three
t'r four years ago in Blackwood's Magazine, and en-
itled, ti Who was the Murderer ?" It is a notion,
lowever, so admirably calculated to display the pecu-
far abilities of Mr. Warren—his ingenuity and sa-
glleity as a lawyer, and his dramatic powers as a
Lovelist—that we are scarcely surprised to find him a
~'coed time employing the same materials and the
.B'l4le machinery, though, this time, be it observed, in
ttoore daring manner, and with a loftier intention.
:ft all times we are indisposed to mar the effect of a
tttcn'y by giving a dry epitome of its incidents and
"el'ebY dissipating its iniluen'ce over the imaginati on of

the reader ; but we are especially disinclined to dissect
the plan of a work like the present—seeing
that the original will, to a dead certainty, be perused
by thousands, and that a single fact divulged, and a
single syllable prematurely uttered, would destroy
the mystery of the tale—and the mystery of a tale is
the talisman of its attaction. If " Now and Then" his
no other merit whatever, it has the merit of en-
thralling interest, an interest that is supreme, that is
present throughout, that inflames the attention, and
renders it breathless with curiosity. This is, in truth,
the paramount characteristic of the volume, and by,
giving a naked analysis of the story we should con-
sequently be forestalling its revelations. What we
shall say, therefore, in reference to some of the occur-
rences recounted in the work will be less in allusion to
the plot than to the moral, and the characters. The inci-
dents are described as having taken place " some-
where about a hundred years ago," in a village called
Milverstoke, situated in one of the seacoast counties
of England. The history opens with a picture of the
cottage of the Ayliffes and a portrait of old Adam
Ayliffe, the father of the convict. This description is,
to our mind, one of the most gracefully-written
portions of the book, it is a noble sketch of a Saxon
yeoman and his dwelling-house—suggested in general
tone, we fancy, by a somewhat similar delineation in
the " Doctor" of Southey. Adam Ayliffe is, how-
ever, peculiarly and distinctly, the creation of Mr.
'Warren : and it is a creation of which he may, in
some measure, be proud. He is depicted as—
" A reduced yeoman well stricken in years, being, at
the time now spoken of, not far from his sixty-eighth
year. The crown of his head was bald, and very finely
formed ; and the little hair that he had left was of a
silvery colour, verging on white. His countenance and
figure were very striking to an observant beholder, who
would have said at once, ' That man is a firm and up-
right character, and has seen trouble'—all which was,
indeed, distinctly written in his open Saxon features.
His eye was of a clear blue, and steadfast in its gaze ;
and when he spoke it was with a certain quaintness,
which seemed in keeping with his simple and stern
character. All who had ever known Ayliffe, enter-
tained for him a deep respect. He was of a very inde-
pendent spirit, somewhat taciturn, and of a retiring,
contemplative humour. His life was utterly blameless,
regulated throughout by the purifying and elevating in-
fluence of Christianity.
Such is the first outline of this noble and admirable
creation. Adam becomes in the end, however, rather
too austere to be very bewitching. His reverence for
the Holy Book is grandly conceived, but we do think
that when the author depicts him with it on every
occasion, bundling it under his arm, sitting down
with it on a milestone, and so forth, it is carrying the
idea rather to an extravagance. Adam Ayliffe, the
son—who is thought afterwards to be the murderer—
is first introduced to us as a handsome young fellow
whom everybody liked : "he had a laugh and a good
word for all whom he met, would do anything to
oblige anybody, and seemed not to know there was
such a thing in the world to be looked after as—self."
Adam the younger marries Sarah, and by her has a
little crippled child.. The fortunes of these constitute
the theme of the volume. Of the other characters
the foremost by rank is the Earl of Milverstoke,
a proud and overbearing Peer, with " a heart in the
right place," but walled round with ice. Lord Alk-
mond—a favourite name with Mr. Warren, for it is
with Lord Alkmond that Charles Aubrey is invited
to spend the Christmas—(see " Ten Thousand a
Year," 1. 224.)—is the son of Lord Milverstoke, and
is the victim found murdered in the wood adjoining
his father's castle. Briefly as he remains before the
reader, his disposition and appearance are vividly im-
pressed upon the memory, from that faculty which
our author possesses in such a remarkable degree—
the faculty of dashing off a character with a few
master-touches. Mr. Oxley, the Earl's local agent,
proves to be one of the villains of the narrative, and
tends considerably towards enhancing the igno-
minious treatment of the young yeoman. Lady
Emily Amaranthe, the sister of Lord Alkmond, and
after wards the Duchess of Waverdale, is a lovely
conception, a companion picture to that of
Kate Aubrey. As an evidence of the dra-
matic energy of the dialogue and as a splendid
development of the natures of Lady Emily Amaranthe
and the Earl of Milverstoke, we will transcribe the
close of a stormy scene between them, having refer-
ence to the guilt or innocence of Adam Ayliffe. After
the father and daughter have been conversing in
broken sentences, the one pleading and the other ex-
pressing wrath at her supplications, the Earl thus
proceeds :
" Does it not occur to you as possible that you are
meddling? meddling with matters beyond your pro-
vince? Is it fitting, girl, he continued, unable to resist
an instantaneous but most bitter emphasis on the word,
that you should be here, talking to me at all, for one
moment even, on a matter which I have never thought
of naming to you—a child?'
" I am a child, papa; but I am your child, and your
only one; and love you more than the whole world."
" Obey me, then, as a proof of that love: retire to
your chamber, and there wonder at what you have ven-
tured—presumed this morning to do.'
"Lady Emily felt the glance of his eye upon her, as
thom.h it had lightened ; but she quailed not.
" My dear, my only parent, I implore you to send
me not away ; let me—'
" I cannot be disobeyed ; I am not in the
habit of being disobeyed by any one ; it is very sad that
I should see the attempt first made by a child.
" 'Oh, papa, forgive me! forgive me!'
"She arose, and, approaching him hastily, as she ob-
served him about to advance, sunk on one knee before
him, clasping her hands together. Oh, hear me, but
for a moment. Never knelt I before but to God, yet
kneel I now to my father. Oh, have mercy ! Nay, be
JUST

" Why, Emily, verily I fear that long confinement and
want of exercise, and change, and air, are preying upon
your mind ; you are not speaking rationally. Rise,
child, and do not pursue this folly—or I may th►nk you
mad.' He disengaged her hands gently from his knees,
which they had the moment before clasped, and raised
her from her kneeling posture, she weeping bitterly.
" I am not mad, papa, nor is my sister; but we fear
lest God's anger should fall upon you ; nay, upon us all,
if you will not listen to the voice of compassion.'
"‘ Be seated, Emily,' said the Earl. 'Excited as you
are at present,' he continued, with rapidly increasing
sternness of manner, no words of mine will be able to
satisfy you of the grievous impropriety, nay, the cruel
absurdity of all this proceeding. You talk to me like a
parrot, about mercy, and compassion, and God's anger,
and so forth, as though you understood what you were
saying, and I understood not what I am doing, what I
ought to do, and what I have done. Child, you forget
yourself, me, and your duty to me. How dared you to
profane yonder Testament, and insult your father, by
Placing it before him as you did this morning? Did
you do so ?'

" I did,' she answered, weeping.
"' You presumptuous girl ! forgetful of the fifth com-
mandment ! '

"' Oh, say not so !—say not so ! I love, I reverence
you—and I FEAR you, now ! ' said Lady Emily, gazing
at him with ;tears running down her cheeks ; her dark
hair partially deranged ; her hands clasped in a suppli-
catory manaer. I prayed to God, first, that I might
not be doing wrong ; that you might not be angry with
me ; that if angry, you might forgive me ! '
" • Angry with you ? Have I not cause ? Never
dared daughter do such thing to father before ?
You presume to rebuke and threaten me—me
—with the vengeance of Heaven, if I yield not
to your sickly, dreaming, drivelling sentimentality.
Silence!' he exclaimed, perceiving her about to speak
earnestly; I have not had my eves closed, I tell you
now, fur days past—l have observed your changed
manner-3;ou have been deliberating long beforehand
how to perpetrate this undutifulness! As thuugh my
heart had not been already struck as with a Vain& rbolt
from Heaven—you, forsooth, you bile, unthinking child!
must strive to stab it—to wound mv! to insult me! This

is not your own doing; you dared not have thought of
it! you are the silly tool of others. Silence! hear me,
undutiful

"' Paps, I cannot hear you say all this, in which you
are so wrong. No tool am lof anybody ! Twice have
you said this thing!' Her figure, the Earl perceived, in-
voluntarily becoming erect as she spoke, and her e)
fixed with steadfast brightness upon his. Had he been
sufficiently calm and observant he might have seen in his
daughter at that moment a faint reflection of his ow❑
lofty spirit—intolerant of injustice. And even you,
papa, have no right whatever thus to talk to me. If I
have done wrong, chide me becomingly; but all that
you have said to me only hurts me, and stings me, and
I cannot submit to it—'
"'Lady Emily, to your chamber!' said the Earl, with
a stately air, rising; so did his daughter.
" My Lord!' she exclaimed magnificently; her tall
figure drawn up to its full height, and her lustrous eyes
fixed unwavering upon his own.
" Neither spoke for a moment; and the Earl began, he
knew not why, to feel great inward agitation, as he
gazed at the erect figure of his silent and indignant
daughter.

My child,' said he, at length, faintly, with a
quivering lip; and extending his arms, he moved a step
towards her; on which she sprang forward into his
arms, throwing her own about his neck, and kissing
his cheek passionately. His strong will for once had
tailed him; his full eyes overflowed, and a tear fell on
his daughter's forehead. She wept bitterly; for a while
he spoke not; but gently led her to a couch, and sat
down beside her.

" Oh, papa, papa!' she murmured, ' how I love you!'
" For a moment he answered not, strug,din,* and
with partial success, to overcome the violence hof his
emotions. Then he spoke in a low deep tone---
"' The voices of the dead are sounding in my ears,
Emily! the tranquil dead! 'Tis said, my Emily'--he
paused for some moments, and his agitation was pro-
digious—' that stern was I to your sweet mother.'
" Oh, dear, dearest, best beloved by daughter,
never!' she cried vehernently,struggling to escape from

his grasp, for he held her rigidly -while gazing at her
with agonized eyes.
"'And I now fearfully feel—l fear—that stern 1 was,
as stern I have this day been to you. Forgive me, ye
weak and blessed dead'—his quivering lips were closed
for a moment, as were his eyes. Oh, Emily! she is
looking at me through your eyes. Oh, how like!' he
remarked, as if speaking to himself. Lady Emily
covered her eyes, and buried her head in his bosom.
Do you, my Emily, forgive me ?'
" Oh, papa? no, no; what have Ito forgive? Every-
thing have I to love! my own, sweet papa! Much I fear
that I may have done what a daughter ought not to have