Lives of the Necromancers: or an account of the most
Eminent Persons in Successive Ages, who have claimed for themselves, or
to whom
has been imputed by others, the Exercise of Magical
Power. By William Godwin, Author of “Caleb Williams,” &c. New
York: Published by Harper Brothers.
The name of the author of Caleb Williams,
and of St. Leon, is, with us, a word of weight, and one which we
consider a
guarantee for the excellence of any composition to which
it may be affixed. There is about all the writings of Godwin, one
peculiarity
which we are not sure that we have ever seen pointed out
for observation, but which, nevertheless, is his chief idiosyncrasy —
setting him peculiarly apart from all other literati
of the day. We allude to an air of mature thought — of deliberate
premeditation pervading, in a remarkable degree, even his
most common-place observations. He never uses a hurried expression, or
hazards
either an ambiguous phrase, or a premature opinion. His
style therefore is highly artificial; but the extreme finish and
proportion
always observable about it, render this artificiality,
which in less able hands would be wearisome, in him a grace inestimable.
We are
never tired of his terse, nervous, and sonorous periods —
for their terseness, their energy, and even their melody, are made, in
all cases, subservient to the sense with which they are
invariably fraught. No English writer, with whom we have any
acquaintance, with
the single exception of Coleridge, has a fuller
appreciation of the value of words; and none is more nicely
discriminative between
closely-approximating meanings. The avowed purpose of the
volume now before us is to exhibit a wide view of human credulity. “To
know” — says Mr. Godwin — “the things that are not, and
cannot be, but have been imagined and believed, is the
most curious chapter in the annals of man.” In extenso we differ with him.
There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in thy philosophy.
There are many things, too, in the great
circle of human experience, more curious than even the records of human
credulity — but that they form one of the most curious
chapters, we were at all times ready to believe, and had we been in any
degree skeptical, the Lives of the Necromancers would have
convinced us.
Unlike the work of Brewster, the
Necromancy of Mr. Godwin is not a Treatise on Natural Magic. It does not
pretend to
show the manner in which delusion acts upon mankind — at
all events, this is not the object of the book. The design, if we
understand it, is to display in their widest extent, the
great range and wild extravagancy of the imagination of man. It is
almost
superfluous to say that in this he has fully succeeded.
His compilation is an invaluable work, evincing much labor [column 2:]
and research, and full of absorbing interest. The only
drawback to the great pleasure which its perusal has afforded us, is
found in the
author’s unwelcome announcement in the Preface, that for
the present he winds up his literary labors with the production of this
book. The pen which wrote Caleb Williams, should never for
a moment be idle.
Were we to specify any article, in the
Necromancy, as more particularly interesting than another, it would be
the one
entitled ‘Faustus.’ The prevalent idea that Fust the
printer, and Faustus the magician, were identical, is here very
properly contradicted.
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