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Untitled Article
if pursuing her object with less power , ever manifesting far more ease , grace , and flexibility . Were we to trace a parentage for the character of her fictions , we might ascribe the maternity to Miss Austen , and the paternity to the author of Barham Downs and Hermsprong . Mrs . Grimstone looks more abroad , beyond mere household doings , than the one ; and has less causticity and partizanship than the other .
It is the lowest praise to which the author is entitled , but it is needful to say , lest we should mislead the reader by the observations just made , that her story is as abundant in stirring incident as the most thorough-bred novel reader can desire . The plot might have been more skilfully developed : its management is however a manifest improvement on that of her former publication . The effect is heightened by the variety of costume , both
physical and mental , which the Jewish characters enable her to introduce . The stately daughter of the Jewish Baron , is a poetical and oriental sketch , and so is the Patriarch Mezrack , and his daughter Hagar . They cast a rich tinge on the familiar faces and homely scenes , like a painted glass window in an English drawing room .
Mrs . Grimstone excells very much , both in the delineation and the developement of character . She preserves its metaphysical truth . Her rnind has a distinct conception of the individual nature of each actor in the history . There are no lay figures . She sustains the propriety of every word and deed , and of all the interior workings of the soul , when her plan requires that these should be laid bare , more completely than it has ever been done ,
save by the great masters of fiction . The influences are distinctly indicated , and the conduct adequately matured . Sir Ralph Beaucaire in becoming the mere creature of vulgar and worldly ambition , and Marmion in becoming the victim of his glowing impressibility , seem to be fulfilling an inevitable destiny . The story only works out the problem of their fate from the given quantities of their nature and their circumstances . From several sketches of character , we select that of Malfort ; the intellectual portion of it ; the personal description is most appropriately fitted to it .
Perhaps none are more surprised at the successful issue of a scheme tnan the very rogue that achieves it ; because , having" tact enough to put matters in a train , they work out their own accomplishment ; and he , conscious of the smallness of his efforts , and his total absence of desert , naturally wonders , in the secret recesses of his soul , at the great result . 4 Malfort was one of those moral enigmas that baffles inquiry . He was at once profound and shallow ; for whatever skill may be exerted to do evil , the doing it shows the mind to be essentially unsound . H , e had courage and cowardice ; he dared to do acts that , if detected , would overwhelm him with disgrace and misery , and he lived in ap-
Untitled Article
546 Character ; or , Jew and Gentile ,
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1833, page 546, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2620/page/34/
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