The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1874-05-03

| fiction Some of the best stories have been
written by women. do not know how to
sufficiently express my admiration Of Maria
Edgeworth. Her novels are worth a whole
wilderness of modern novels which win
popularity by extensive laudation. Let me
try and tell you how New England woman
once wrote a great novel.
! Beset with difficulties and pinched with
poverty, tired but earnest little body was
sitting in a cottage down in Brunswick,
Me- She had labored all day long, the
children had been hushed to sleep, all was
still about the cottage. and she trims her
lamp for long session at her writing-table.
The village clock has struck one, and still,
with her great purpose, she makes the pen
fly across the tear-stained paper. She is
terribly in earnest she laughs and weeps,
and agonizes with herself: down there
among the pines of Maine. There is a great
wrong to Be righted, and she writes on,
until, in Gods good time, she has got
through with her sobbing. Uncle Toms
Cabin is completed, and the world rejoices
over tine name of Harriet Beecher Stowe
Applause. Now. no doubt, shall offend
many of my audience with what l have to
say about Edward Bulwer. wish to render
due credit to his Rienzi and some Others of
his works, but l agree with the final judg-
ment of Harrison, Thackeray and others, that,
oftentimes, he environed vice with all the
charms of his genius.
l knew him personally and always re-
ceived great kindness at his hands. He
never struck me as generous man, though
he was always polite and sometimes mildly
tnseltish. He was, no doubt, a magician in
his art, but, like the magicians who coun-
seled Pharaoh, h is magic hardens the heart.
Dry brilliancy is neither sweetness nor
light. Bufwer had all HhHfitigated but well
disguised contempt tor people with small
incomes and he always put on his respirator
when he went among people of the middle
class. l am afraid the poison speck was i'll
Bulwer's mind from the first. Dickens
wrote with a vehemence of conviction, and
had, from the start, enthusiasm for huInani-
ty; his moral machinery never creaks or
groans. Where pions Bulwer ends and
prohgate Bulwer begins il is hard to say.
1t is of course supertiuous to recommend the
novels of Charles Dickens. In the kingdom
of English fiction you will find no recent
greater name than his, and believe it will
grow larger with time and be fully adequate
to front eternity.
He was always loyal to his art and the
nobility OF his devotion to work. and his
undaunted persistence in labor made him
what he was, the master of his time, as well
as of his genius. He once said to Inc.
g Nothing repays like perseverance, and
that is good lesson for all of us to learn.
The key to Dickens is his motive as novel
list. He tells us in his preface to Oliver
Twist, " In this spirit wish to show in little
Oliver the principle of good surviving
through every circumstance and triumphing
ut last" Dickens's art seems to eliminate
" hen he is flashing hypocrisy or writing some
wrong. He was the APOSTLE of
Justice, and his creed was written in the
Ten Commandments and the New Tesla
ment. Now just here, while speaking of
the best, l have word to say of the worst
class of writers. / dare say many of those
who are here scarcely know to what All ex-
tent the worst Freuch novels have been in
troduced into this country. Now, it does not
take long to destroy a people that feels
labitually on immoral literature.
The Prussian drum-beat in the streets of
Paris is to ME solemn voice against Ma
5ional character, modelled OH literature, ad-
dressed for one hundred years, not to the
Judgment, but the nerves. Let us Danish at
,nce that unhealthy literature, One-half of
jhe maxims whereof are leveled at morali-
~ and the Divine teaching. This is very
plain talk, ladies and gentlemen, but it is
lime somebody spoke it. Applause. Let |
is pass to more agreeable subjects. Thack- !
cray is almost the father of intellectual nov
lists, and was perhaps the best appointed |
nan of letters Of his time. AS Agassiz dis
'ected the turtle, so Thackeray took to pieces |
he soft-shclled snob. Laughter He once
aid to me, "There goes Mr.. Blank, silly |
I'D fool, but l like him because he doesn't |
TODD no chance with him. He detected |
With fatal accuracy whether the light was
ire or fireworks. Fenimore Cooper's novels |
ire, fear, not so much read here as abroad. |
md vet in his own peculiar walk lie has no |
ival.
No author ever touched the romance of I
he sea like him, and he peoples our forests,
90, with heroes that are giants in the realm
# fiction. 1t was, | think, a bright day for
america when Washington Irving opened
lis eyes to the light in 1893. He adds to
he creations of honest humorists some of
he most delightful characters that ever
brought laughter into this world. When
,ir Walter Scott first got bold of Knicker-
'ockers New York he wrote, saying, "Our
ides are actually sore with laughing As
o the genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne, it is
lifficult to find words to describe it, He is
me of the authors who polish aud sweeten
'ur language, and leave it better than they
ound it. 1t would be great fault if /
we're not to refer to the greatest living En-
,lish novelist, whom | rejoice to say is
woman, George Eliot" as she calls herself.
She is rs much Queen of her art Il. Victoria
$ of England. Twenty-Five years ago l
vas introduced at the house of John Chap
nan, in London, to Miss Marian Evans, and
We fell into talk about America and the
tate of literature in England. Her CONVEX
alton was SO agreeable that / forgot to ex-
mine her appearance. Afterwards, when l
anne to see the author of Adam Bede "
nd Middlemarch in her own house, she
ecalled our little talk in Johns back parlor.
To my thinking she is the noblest- looking.
reature in all England. But the list of our
enefactors in the world of fiction is an
ndless one. There is that dear old nautical
pirit Capt. Marryat, and G.. p R. James,
hon | knew personally, and who said to
lie that he was glad he had done something
D please his generation, and he " didn't
lind if the critics did laugh at his time
onored horseman." Then there is Miss
askell, Miss Terrier and Charlotte Bronte.
here are many still living who deserve orr