The Sun.
London, England, 1848-02-15 00:00:00

' SECOC.L'iD EDITION OF " NOW AND
THEN."
Oar opinion of Mr. Warren's latest fiction has
been co:rrohorated, not merely by the commendations
of our -Contemporaries, but by the coincident opinion
of the Public. A little more than one calendar
month ;has elapsed since the first appearance of "Now
and Then," and a second edition has already proved
requisite. This, we take it, is a healthful sign as to
the state of the average taste in literature. The prac-
tical encomium which has thus been pronounced upon
the volume, to our thinking, affords a favourable
prognostic for our more natural and inartificial novel-
isol; it is a sufficient attestation that the perceptive
faculties. of English readers have not been perma-
nently I slurred by the mists of caricature, and that
their imaginations have not been actually diseased by
I the prusaient effusions which have latterly achieved a
certain degree of popularity. Neither the success of
" TEO-Thiry of a Late Physician," or of " Ten Thou-
sand a Year," proved this fact so forcibly as the em
'deltic and almost unanimous approval expressed
upon the unostentatious merits of "Now and Then."
Remarkable as were the powers betrayed in the two
preceding works, the genius of the author received from
each of tt le subjects a degree of adventitious aid such as
derogated in some measure from their excellence as
literary compositions. In " The Diary of a Late
Physician," for eximple, curiosity was excited by the
hideous revelations of physical suffering which con-
stitutes the experience of a medical. practitioner. On
the other band, " Ten Thousand a Year" was ren-
dered that vehicle for political sarcasms, such as could
not fail from their bitterness, and occasionally even
from their personalities, to tickle the appetite of a
numerous class of partizans. One production was to
a considerable extent assisted in the acquisition of a
speedier renown by the excitement caused by its
many agonizing narratives; the other was invested
with a very different but equally potent air of fasci-
nation by its adroit and earnest appeals to the pas-
sions of politicians. In the last work of Mr. War-
ren, however, no extraneous help whatever has been
sought after—no bait is tendered in its pages to the
morbid or the factious—the chapters are not tesse-
listed by the ghastly shadows of agony, nor are the
characters of the story coloured with the brilliant
hues of sarcastic allusion. " Now and Then"
is as simple as an English tale can be :
simple in construction ; simple in diction ; simple in
interest, and eminently simple in purpose. The plot
flows onward as naturally, and, if one may so speak,
as spontaneously as a river—narrow and clear at its
commencement, varied and meandering as it pro-
gresses, and spreading out in dimensions, and becom-
ing more profound in moral, and more rapid in inci-
dent, as it approaches its conclusion. On reviewing
the work immediately upon its first publication we
commented upon this distinguishing and laudable
peculiarity. While, moreover, we expressed our ad-
miration of what appeared to us to be its most con-
spicuous excellences—its elegant and idiomatic lan-
guage, the clever development of the story, the
truthfulness of its characters, and the majestic moral
of which it was intended to be the enforcement--we
did not abstain from taking exception to several of its
incidental and more noticeable blemishes. In the new
edition which has just been issued we perceive
nct merely a moderate extension of the fiction, but
the evidences of a very careful and even scrupulous
emendation. Although Mr. Warren still preserves
the austerity of old Adam Ayliffe's manner towards
the close of the volume, he elevates and ennobles the
misfortunes of the younger Adam by interpolating in
the remarks of good Parson Ilyltoa the following
exquisite passages of consolation :-
6. Great and terrib!e are the sufferings both of mind
and body which you have undergone ; but they have
been inflicted upon you by an Allwise, Just, and Incom-
prehensible God. Your duty is humble and joyful sub-
mission to all His dispensations : He owes you nothing:
you owe Him everything. As He is your Maker, so Ile
is your Judge ! It is for Him alone to deal with you,
both here and hereafter, as seemeth best to His infinite
wisdom. Had you perished on the scaffold : had you
died in ignominious exile after leading a long life of
bodily agony—insect of the dust ! What could you
have said against it to your Omnipotent Creator ? But
in judgment He has remembered mercy : lie has given
you the consolations of religion : RESIGNATION : peace
of mind, even in your very sorrow. Awfully incom-
prohensible in His nature, He has yet permitted
you to see in Him a FATHER ! who chasteneth those
whom.lle loveth, and even vouchsafes to them some few
glimpses of His wondrous government of the world.
Long suffering, He stoops even to reason with His crea-
tures ! And is it no mark- of His favour and blessing
that you are now here ? Alive ? With your loving
wife beside yon ? And your venerable father alive to
welcome you ? And your character and innocence
vindicated before all mankind?"

Among the minor, or rather verbal improvements, in the '
second edition, we must especially mention the circum-
stance that the author seems to have rectifiedthroughout
the scholarly blunder of reversing the positions of
the nominative and objective cases in their relation to
the verb. Graceful in Latinity, it is a practice which
sounds awkward enough in English composition, and
for this reason we are gratified to find that the pure
Saxon utterances of "Now and Then" are no longer
injured by its recurrence. We direct attention like-
wise to these minute corrections, for the pur-
pose of showing that the new edition is
something bettor than a simple reprint. Already it
would seem that "Now and Then " has acquired for
itself an audience beyond the shores of England.
From its republication in the -United States it appears
to have obtained a fresh multitude of readers
beyond the Atlantic ; at Leipzic and at
Paris it starts forth suddenly in French and
German translations. This rapidity of diffusion is
chiefly attributable of course to the celebrity already
acquired by Mr. Warren, for we cannot but think
that the simplicity, the naturalness, and the exalted
morality of "Now and Then" will at the outset prove
somewhat distasteful to those who have been hitherto
glutted with the exaggerations of a romantic, ornate,
and indecent literature. In America, for instance,
the wholesome and inimitable fancies of Washington
Irving have been latterly neglected for the extrava-
gant and sometimes preposterous conceits of Edgar
A. Poe. In Germany the fantastic visions of Richter
and the domestic puerilities of Schokke hare
• become the fashionable themes of panegyric;
' while in France it is notorious that public
delicacy is perpetually outraged by a swarm of veteran
or incipient feuilletonists, by the grim imaginings of
De 13alzic, the voluptuous delineations of Sand, the
impudent laxity of Dumas, the distortions of Sue, and
the lascivious dreamings of De Kock. Amidst such a
fraternity o: vicious writers Mr. Warren may in a
foreign version exercise no mean or evanescent influ-
ence—for with the daintiest purity of purpose he
combines a masculine energy and an enthralling in-
terest, qualities which are absolutely essential to con-
quer the prejudices inspired by a depraved and vitiated
school. If "Now and Then" can only tend to beat
down the Standard of the Flesh in the hearts of the
novel-readers of Paris and Prussia, and to elevate in
its stead that Standard of the Spirit which is the
banner of Christianity, it will have nobly fulfilled a
mission which it is eminently qualified to accomplish,
and will have diffused beyond the circumference of a
clique that abiding zeal for religion which burns so
' brightly in the ideal hearts of Adam Ayliffe and
Henry Hylton.