The Edinburgh Review (Volume 77) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Art. III.? Tlie Recreations of Christopher North. Three vols. 8vo. Edinburgh: 1842. rpHESE are in every way remarkable volumes, whether regarded J- as illustrative of the character of the writer, or of the tendencies of the criticism of the time, to which his influence and example have given so general and decided a direction. It is not indeed easy to say, whether the interest which their perusal excites is chiefly to be referred to the very singular combination of moral and mental powers implied in their composition?where qualities which are generally deemed incompatible are found to be united in harmony?or to the strong feeling of the influence which this combination, expressing itself in forms of such originality and power as to arrest the attention of literary men, and at the same time, to appeal to the ordinary tastes and sympathies of the public, by the use of instruments at once familiar and powerful, must have exercised upon the taste of the time, and the whole tone and spirit of our criticism, as well as its form. The Essays which are collected in these volumes, and which originally appeared in a scattered form in Blackwood's Magazine, are now united by a slender tie. They are announced as ' The Recreations of Christopher North.' We need say little, we presume, of the imaginary personage who claims their authorship, except that, notwithstanding the palpably incongruous assemblage of qualities with which he is invested, such are the vivacity and picturesque truth with which his sayings and doings have been here depicted, that few creatures of the imagination have succeeded in impressing their image on the public with more distinctness of portraiture, or a stronger sense of reality. Few indeed find any difficulty in calling up before the mind's eye, with nearly the sa...