THE author of "Sartor Resartus," in a petition to the House of Commons, on the copyright question, signs himself "Thomas Carlyle, a Maker of Books." This phrase, which applies to Herr Teufelsdröckh only in a quaint sense, is applicable to Mr. G. P. R. James in its literal meaning. He is, indeed, no "maker" in the old significance of that term, for he creates nothing; but he is emphatically a literary mechanic. The organs of his brain are the tools of his trade. He manufactures novels, as other people manufacture shoes, shirts, and sheetings; he continually works up the same raw material into very nearly the same shapes. The success he has met with in his literary speculations should be chronicled in the Merchants' or Mechanics' Magazine. He is a most scientific expositor of the fact, that a man may be a maker of books without being a maker of thoughts; that he may be the reputed author of a hundred volumes, and flood the market with his literary wares, and yet have very few ideas and principles for his stock in trade. For the last ten years, he has been repeating his own repetitions, and echoing his own echoes. His first novel was a shot that went through

*The False Heir. B G. P. R. James, Esq., author of "Morley Ernstein, "Forest Days," &c. New-York: Harper & Brothers. Price one shilling 1843.-North American Review, April, 1844.

ne target, and he has ever since been assiduously firing through the hole. To protect his person from critical assault, he might pile up a bulwark of books many volumes thick and many feet high; yet the essence of all that he has written, if subjected to a refining process, might be compressed into a small space, and even then would hardly bear the test of time, and journey safely down to posterity. When we reflect upon the character and construction of his works, and apply to them certain searching tests, they dwindle quickly into very moderate dimensions. We find that the enormous helmet encloses only a small nut, that the nut is an amplified exponent of the kernel, and that the kernel itself is neither very rich nor very rare. As space has no limits, and as large portions of it are still unoccupied by tangible bodies, it seems not very philosophical to quarrel with any person who endeavors to fill up its wide chasms; yet, in the case of Mr. James, we grudge the portion of infinite space which his writings occupy, and dispute his right to pile up matter which is the type or symbol of so small an amount of spirit. We sigh for the old vacuum, and think, that though nature may have abhorred it in the days of Aristotle, her feelings must have changed since modern mediocrity has filled it with such weak apologies for substance and form.

Piron, standing before the hundred volumes of Voltaire, remarked, "This luggage is too heavy to go down to posterity." What would he have said, if he could have seen the hundred volumes published by Mr. James? We think of "The Vicar of Wakefield," which one can carry in his pocket; of Charles Lamb's delightful "Essays;" of the tragedy of "Ion ;" and of many other small and precious gems, which time cannot dim; and when

we contrast these with Mr. James's voluminous medioc rity and diffusive commonplace, we obtain a new and vivid idea of the distinction between quantity and quality.

When a man has little or nothing to say, he should say it in the smallest space. He should not, at any rate, take up more room than suffices for a creative mind. He should not provoke hostility and petulance, by the effrontery of his demands upon time and patience. He should let us off with a few volumes, and gain our gratitude for his benevolence, if not our praise for his talents. But when we find him "multiplying himself among mankind," and looking out upon us from such a vast variety of points,-demanding our assent to the common notion that he is a great producer of thought and sentiment, — we are provoked into a desire to sift his preten. sions to the bottom.

We would not be so unjust to the numerous readers of Mr. James, even to that unfortunate portion of them who consider him the legitimate successor of Scott, as to assert their ignorance of his faculty of reproduction. A dim reminiscence, similar to that on which Plato founds his doctrine of the soul's preëxistence, they must have had occasionally, while re-perusing an old novel in a new dress. A dull country gentleman was once seduced into an attempt to read "The Vicar of Wakefield." He journeyed through that exquisite book, seemingly at the rate of ten pages in an evening; but when he laid it down for the night, and carefully marked the place where he stopped, some impudent niece or nephew put the mark about eight pages back in the volume. Of course, many months elapsed before he arrived at the end. He was then asked how he was pleased with it. "O! he liked it very well, but he thought there was »

ittle repetition in it!" An objection somewhat similar to this we have heard made against Mr. James, and with about as clear an insight into the real secret of the

matter.

To write a good novel, or a series of good novels, is not generally considered, even by those whose whole reading is confined to romance, to require any great effort of talent or genius. A man who repeats some axioms in physics, or wraps up a plain fact in a metaphysical shroud, is more likely to be considered as a great personage, than a writer of creative mind, who thrills the heart, or warms the imagination, with a prose epic. The products of the inventive powers rarely obtain so much of the popular reverence as the deductions of the understanding. Works which have caused their authors vast labor and patient meditation; which have stimulated every faculty of their nature to the utmost, which may have required, not only the highest imagination, but the deepest and most comprehensive thought; and which are pervaded, it may be, by the results of a whole life of feeling, action, observation, and reflection; are still generally classed as "light reading." It may be light reading, but nothing is more certain than that it is not commonly light writing. The novel of "Ivanhoe" may be placed by some in the department of light literature. But if those who coolly classify in this manner would but reflect upon the vast and minute knowledge of English history it displays, the power of intellect evinced in the conduct of the story, and the greater power of imagination exercised in making the dead past a living present; and, especially, if they would bring to mind the author, as he appeared while the scene between Rebecca and the Knight Templar was circling through

his heart and fancy, as he strode hurriedly up and dowr his study, his face agitated by passionate thought, and his lips quivering with the intensity of his feelings, — they might perhaps think that the matter was not so "light" after all, and that any word suggestive of indolence was the most inapplicable that could be used.

In reading novels, but little regard is paid to the high genius which they sometimes manifest. The interest of the story is the test which is usually applied by the general reader. A young lady reads with great delight "The Scottish Chiefs," "The Children of the Abbey," or "Santo Sebastiano." The sentiments are refined, the incidents please, and the whole work is "so interesting!" She takes up "The Bride of Lammermoor," a tragedy which Sophocles might have written, had he lived in this age, and acknowledges that, though it is interesting, it is an, unpleasant book, for it ends badly. And thus she judges. To her, Miss Porter, Mrs. Roche, Mrs. Radcliffe, Miss Edgeworth, Scott, Bulwer, James, and Dickens, are all delightful novelists, all interesting, and therefore all equally good, except that Scott and Dickens are sometimes inclined to low humor, and are not always so refined as the others. At the same time, she acknowledges that reading their books is a frivolous occupation, and is likely to unfit the mind for practical duties; and she throws out dubious hints of the histories and phi losophies which form the staple of her reading, and of the scientific lectures which she honors with her attend

ance.

The absence in most minds of any clear principles of criticism, and the many bad and feeble novels which are mixed up confusedly with those which are excellent, are the probable causes of this hallucination. We are often