ABSTRACT
The indifference with which the average reader-disconsolate in the recollection of many failures-may naturally regard a new classical romance, will not long ‘serve his turn’ when Antonina is opened. It is a richly-coloured impassioned story, busy with life, importunately strong in its appeals to our sympathy-one which claims rank not far behind the antique fictions of Lockhart, Croly, Bulwer and Ward. Mr. Collinsis possibly less deeply scholastic, less precisely antiquarian than many of his predecessors; but his dramatic instinct makes up for want of elaborate training. Goth and Roman, Christian and Pagan are contrasted by him with a power which no closet study can give. In their vitality we have a glimmer of that burning breathing life which the Warwickshire deer-stealer could throw into his Cleopatra, and Cressida, and Coriolanus, and Brutus. This, as we have a thousand times said, commands, and will win, the crown. The subject selected by Mr. Collins is one tempting an inventor to details which shock the sense. The revenge of the Gothic woman Goisvintha, made frantic by the murder of her children at the siege of Acquileia-the famine in the City of the Caesars,—the hideous death-banquet of the Patrician Vetranio, (sad imitation of the last revel of Sardanapalus)—the sacrifice of the idol-worshipper in his temple-all fall naturally within the scope of a legend of ‘The Fall of Rome.’ All are incidents and catastrophes in painting or in penning which the waiting-gentlewoman’s palette and crow-quill as implements would become offensive by reason of their unbefitting feebleness. Still, we must warn Mr. Collins against the vices of the French school,—against the needless accumulation of revolting details,—against catering for a prurient taste by dwelling on such incidental portions of the subject as, being morbid, ought to be treated incidentally. Need we remind a painter’s son how much Terror and Power are enhanced by Beauty? There is possibly no more rivetting picture in the world than Da Vinci’s Medusa in the Florence Gallery,—yet how calm it is as compared with many a Mater dolorosa by inferior hands.—This caution given, we have little to do but repeat our commendations. The extent and complexity of Mr. Collins’s pictures prevent our extracting any scene which could afford a fair idea of his manner;—but we have little fear that any romance-reader who takes up this book on our warrant will accuse us of exaggerated praise.
