style of composition by which the present era is characterized; and we
might have added, that a change equally complete, though diametrically
opposite in its tendency, has been silently introduced into our prose.
In this we have oscillated from freedom to restraint;--from the easy,
natural, and colloquial style of Swift, Addison and Steele, to the
perpetually strained, ambitious, and overwrought stiffness, of which the
author we are now considering affords a striking exemplification. "He's
knight o' the shire, and represents them all." There is not the smallest
keeping in his composition:--less solicitous what he shall say, than how
he shall say it, he exhausts himself in a continual struggle to produce
effect by dazzling, terrifying, or surprising. Annibal Caracci was
accused of an affectation of muscularity, and an undue parade of
anatomical knowledge, even upon quiescent figures: But the artist whom
we are now considering has no quiescent figures:--even his repose is a
state of rigid tension, if not extravagant distortion. He is the Fuseli
of novelists. Does he deem it necessary to be energetic, he forthwith
begins foaming at the mouth, and falling into convulsions; and this
orgasm is so often repeated, and upon such inadequate occasions, that we
are perpetually reminded of the tremendous puerilities of the Della
Cruscan versifiers, or the ludicrous grand eloquence of the Spaniard,
who tore a certain portion of his attire, "as if heaven and earth were
coming together." In straining to reach the sublime, he perpetually
takes that single unfortunate step which conducts him to the ridiculous
--a failure which, in a less gifted author, might afford a wicked
amusement to the critic, but which, when united with such undoubted
genius as the present work exhibits, must excite a sincere and painful
regret in every admirer of talent.

Whatever be the cause, the fact, we think, cannot be disputed, that a
peculiar tendency to this gaudy and ornate style, exists among the