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POE'S REVIEW OF
"Romance of Travel" by N. P. Willis

Romance of Travel, comprising Tales of Five Lands. By the Author of "Pencilings by the Way." S. Colman, New York.

This volume includes nine narratives — Lady Ravelgold ; Paletto's Bride ; Violanta Caesarina ; Pasquali, The Tailor of Venice ; The Bandit of Austria ; Oonder Hoofden, or The Undercliff ; The Picker and Piler ; Stratford on Avon ; and Charlecote. There is a dedication, very brief, to Rufus Dawes ; and no preface. Altogether, there is much less of petty affectation about the outworks of the book than was at one time usual with Mr. Willis. We are not quite sure, however, whether he himself is entitled to credit for the improvement. There are some circumstances which induce us to think that the author of the "Inklings," and the "Pencilings," and the "Jottings Down," had no direct agency in the getting up of the "Romance of Travel." The absence of preface is especially suspicious. Be this matter as it may, however, we feel confident that our author could not have seen the proofs of the present publication, which, we are sorry to say, abounds in gross errors of either haste or typography — so greatly indeed, that, had we perused nothing else than this work from the pen of Mr. W., we should have called him one of the loosest writers of a day when loose writing, habitually practised and permitted, is making irreparable inroads upon the purity and stability of the language. But we happen to be quite sure that the many blunders in the volume before us are, at least, not deliberate perpetrations. In the minor morals of literature our author has scarcely a superior in America.

In regard to the more important features of the Tales, we find Mr. Willis still Mr. Willis. We observe his usual range of subject, his customary mode of handling, his ordinary points of ornament. The best story here, upon the whole, is that called "The Picker and Piler." Its striking, yet imperfect, inconsistent, and inconsequential incidents, are strongly characteristic. As for plot, properly conceived, of that our poet never should be accused — and certainly not in the case of the "Picker and Piler." The story runs thus.

A privateer captain, at the close of the late war between England and America, not choosing to become a pirate by continuing his cruise, is set ashore a beggar by his crew. Unfitted for social life, and doubly disgusted by the conduct of relatives at home, in whose charge he had left a daughter during his own absence at sea, he determines upon the rigid seclusion of the maiden from the world, and for this end, can think of no better plan than that of burying himself and her in the western wilderness, where his mode of life resembles nothing more nearly than that of a salamander. For example; he first cuts a clearing of an acre or so, in the heart of a dense forest, and afterwards a narrow and intricate lane, from this clearing to the prairie. He then sets fire to the whole wood, and lives like a conjurer within a charmed circle. When the trees are fairly burned down, he takes up other quarters in a similar way. It so happens, however, that a stranger finds his way, one day, through the lane, and by this stranger the young lady is not treated precisely as one could wish. The ex-captain resolves upon the death of the lover, and the manner in which this death is brought about, forms the pith of the whole story — the sting in the tail of the bee. A burning pine has fallen across an ash, uprooting the latter in its descent. "The earth and stones had followed the uptorn mass, forming a solid upright wall, from which, like struggling fingers, stretching back in agony to the ground from which they had parted, a few rent and naked roots pointed into the cavity." "The sequel," says our author most inartistically, "will show why I am so particular in this description." The truth is that the lover goes to sleep, like a fool, just in the hollow beneath the roots of the tree.

Hereupon the ex-captain jumps up, with his axe, upon the still smouldering pine, whose weight alone holds down the elastic ash. A single stroke suffices to sever the burning trunk—the ends slide off in opposite directions — the ash uprises — and the sleeper is buried. Here beyond doubt, is a striking and, we believe, an original idea — an idea which, in competent hands, might have been made to produce an electric effect. But Mr. Willis has done nothing with it at all. He "dawdles" too long with his theme, and fritters away his main interest in irrelevancy. We get angry with him as we read, and feel an itching to kick him along. Instead of finding our attention riveted to the coming catastrophe — a catastrophe, by the way, which every reader is weakly permitted to foresee for at least half an hour before it occurs — we are perpetually reminded of the writer of the story — whose image is sure to jump up every now and then before us, in an embroidered morning gown and slippers, with a pen in one hand, and a bottle of eau de Cologne in the other. The concluding words of the narrative are a case in point. "A struggle — a contortion — and the leafless and wavering top of the recovered and upright tree rocked with its effort, and a long sharp cry had gone out echoing through the woods, and was still." All this is very good — it might have been better, to be sure — but still it is very good. The catastrophe is over — the story is ended. No — the writer has yet five words, as usual, to say of himself. "I felt my brain reel!" Body of Bacchus ! — we were talking about the crushing of a fellow creature to death, and not about those everlasting brains of Mr. Willis. Who cares the matter of two pence halfpenny whether that gentleman has any brains at all ?

P.

Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, VI
March 1840

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