phecy of Poe and
Hawthorne, though his art was greatly inferior to Poe's, and almost
infinitely so to Hawthorne's. His books belong more properly to the
contemporary school of fiction in England which preceded the "Waverley
Novels"--to the class that includes Beckford's _Vathek_, Godwin's
_Caleb Williams_ and _St. Leon_, Mrs. Shelley's _Frankenstein_, and
such "Gothic" romances as Lewis's _Monk_, Walpole's _Castle of
Otranto_, and Mrs. Radcliffe's _Mysteries of Udolpho_. A
distinguishing characteristic of this whole school is what we may call
the clumsy-horrible. Brown's romances are not wanting in inventive
power, in occasional situations that are intensely thrilling, and in
subtle analysis of character; but they are fatally defective in art.
The narrative is by turns abrupt and tiresomely prolix, proceeding not
so much by dialogue as by elaborate dissection and discussion of
motives and states of mind, interspersed with the author's reflections.
The wild improbabilities of plot and the unnatural and even monstrous
developments of character {395} are in startling contrast with the
old-fashioned preciseness of the language; the conversations, when
there are any, being conducted in that insipid dialect in which a fine
woman was called an "elegant female." The following is a sample
description of one of Brown's heroines, and is taken from his novel of
_Ormond_, the leading character in which--a combination of unearthly
intellect with fiendish wickedness--is thought to have been suggested
by Aaron Burr: "Helena Cleves was endowed with every feminine and
fascinating quality. Her features were modified by the most transient
sentiments and were the seat of a softness at all times blushful and
bewitching. All those graces of symmetry, smoothness and lustre, which
assemble in the imagination of the painter when he calls from the bosom
of her natal deep the Paphian divinity, blended their perfections in
the shade, complexion, and hair of this lady." But, alas! "Helena's
intellectual deficiencies could not be concealed. She was proficient
in the elements of no science. The doctrine of lines and surfaces was
as disproportionate with her intellects as with those of the mock-bird.
She had not reasoned on the principles of human action, nor examined
the structure of society.~.~.~. She could not commune in their native
dialect with the sages of Rome and Athens.~.~.~. The constitution of
nature, the attributes of its Author,