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ARTICLE IX.

REMARKS ON FRANKENSTEIN.

[Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. 3 vols. 12mo. From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, March, 1818.]

"Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man? Did I solicit thee

From Darkness to promote me ?"

Paradise Lost.

THIS is a novel, or more properly a romantic fiction, of a nature so peculiar, that we ought to describe the species before attempting any account of the individual production.

The first general division of works of fiction, into such as bound the events they narrate by the actual laws of nature, and such as, passing these limits, are managed by marvellous and supernatural machinery, is sufficiently obvious and decided. But the class of marvellous romances admits of several subdivisions. In the earlier productions of imagination, the poet or tale-teller does not, in his own opinion, transgress the laws of credibility, when he introduces into his narration the witches, goblins,

and magicians, in the existence of which he himself,
as well as his hearers, is a firm believer. This good# 2.
faith, however, passes away, and works turning autho
upon the marvellous are written and read merely exercer
on account of the exercise which they afford to the
"imagination"
imagination of those who, like the poet Collins, love
to riot in the luxuriance of Oriental fiction, to rove
through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on
the magnificence of golden palaces, and to repose
by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens. In this spe-
cies of composition, the marvellous is itself the prin-
cipal and most important object both to the author
and reader. To describe its effect upon the mind of
the human personages engaged in its wonders, and
dragged along by its machinery, is comparatively
an inferior object.) The hero and heroine, partakers
of the supernatural character which belongs to their
adventures, walk the maze of enchantment with a
firm and undaunted step, and appear as much at
their ease, amid the wonders around them, as the
young fellow described by the Spectator, who was
discovered taking a snuff with great composure in
the midst of a stormy ocean, represented on the
stage of the opera.

A more philosophical and refined use of the supernatural in works of fiction, is proper to that class in which the laws of nature are represented as altered, not for the purpose of pampering the imagination with wonders, but in order to show the probable effect which the supposed miracles would produce on those who witnessed them. In this case, the pleasure ordinarily derived from the marvellous

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252 CRITICISM ON NOVELS AND ROMANCES.

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"By scenes like these which, daring to depart From sober truth, are still to nature true.' (Even in the description of his marvels, however, the author, who manages this style of composition with address, gives them an indirect importance with the reader, when he is able to describe, with nature and with truth, the effects which they are calculated to produce upon his dramatis persona. It will be remembered, that the sapient Partridge was too wise to be terrified at the mere appearance of the ghost of Hamlet, whom he knew to be a man dressed up in pasteboard armour for the nonce : it was when he saw the "little man," as he called Garrick, so frightened, that a sympathetic horror took hold of him. Of this we shall presently produce some examples from the narrative before us. But success in this point is still subordinate to the author's principal object, which is less to produce an effect by means of the marvels of the narrations, than to open new trains and channels of thought, by placing men in supposed situations of an extraordinary and preternatural character, and then describing the mode of feeling and conduct which they are most likely to adopt.

To make more clear the distinction we have endeavoured to draw between the marvellous and the effects of the marvellous, considered as separate objects, we may briefly invite our readers to compare the common tale of Tom Thumb with Gulli

ver's Voyage to Brobdingnag; one of the most childish fictions, with one which is pregnant with wit and satire, yet both turning upon the same assumed possibility of the existence of a pigmy among a race of giants. In the former case, when the imagination of the story-teller has exhausted itself in every species of hyperbole, in order to describe the diminutive size of his hero, the interest of the tale is at an end; but in the romance of the Dean of St Patrick's, the exquisite humour with which the natural consequences of so strange and unusual a situation is detailed, has a canvass on which to expand itself, as broad as the luxuriance even of the author's talents could desire. Gulliver stuck into a marrow bone, and Master Thomas Thumb's disastrous fall into the bowl of hasty-pudding, are, in the general outline, kindred incidents; but the jest is exhausted in the latter case, when the accident is told; whereas in the former, it lies not so much in the comparatively pigmy size which subjected Gulliver to such a ludicrous misfortune, as in the tone of grave and dignified feeling with which he resents the disgrace of the incident.

In the class of fictitious narrations to which we allude, the author opens a sort of account-current with the reader; drawing upon him, in the first

which he proposes to employ; and becoming virtually bound, in consequence of this indulgence, that his personages shall conduct themselves, in the extraordinary circumstances in which they are placed, according to the rules of probability, and

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the nature of the human heart. In this view, the probable is far from being laid out of sight even amid the wildest freaks of imagination; on the contrary, we grant the extraordinary postulates which the author demands as the foundation of his narrative, only on condition of his deducing the consequences with logical precision.

We have only to add, that this class of fiction has been sometimes applied to the purposes of political satire, and sometimes to the general illustration of the powers and workings of the human mind. Swift, Bergerac, and others, have employed it for the former purpose, and a good illustration of the latter is the well-known Saint Leon of William Godwin. In this latter work, assuming the possibility of the transmutation of metals and of the elixir vitæ, the author has deduced, in the course of his narrative, the probable consequences of the possession of such secrets upon the fortunes and mind of him who might enjoy them. Frankenstein is a novel upon the same plan with Saint Leon; it is said to be written by Mr Percy Bysshe Shelley, who, if we are rightly informed, is sonin-law to Mr Godwin ;1 and it is inscribed to that ingenious author.

In the preface, the author lays claim to rank his work among the class which we have endeavoured to describe.

"The event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed by Dr Durwin, and some of the physiological writers of

[The author of Frankenstein is Mrs Shelley, daughter of Mr Godwin and Mrs Mary Woolstonecroft. See her Preface to the last edition.]

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