Critical Notices [pp. 326-340]

SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.
Player. These facts are well known to many of our
citizens. The reason assigned for the suspension of
the Chess-Player's performances, was not the illness of
Schlumberger. The inferences from all this we leave,
without farther comment, to the reader.
17. The Turk plays with his left arm. A circumstance so remarkable cannot be accidental. Brewster
takes no notice of it whatever, beyond a mere statement, we believe, that such is the fact. The early
writers of treatises on the Automaton, seem not to have
observed the matter at all, and have no reference to it.
The author of the pamphlet alluded to by Brewster,
mentions it, but acknowledges his inability to account
for it. Yet it is obviously from such prominent disclepancies or incongruities as this that deductions are to be
made (if made at all) which shall lead us to the truth.
The circumstance of the Automaton's playing with
his left hand cannot have connexion with the operations
of the machine, considered merely as such. Any mechlianical arrangement which would cause the figure to
move, in any given manner, the left arin-could, if rcversed, cause it to move, in tile same manner, the right.
But these principles cannot be extended to the human
organization, wherein there is a mnarked and radical difference in the construction, and, at all events, in the
powers, of the righit and left arms. Reflecting upon this
latter fact, we naturally refer the incongruity noticeable
in the Chess-Player to this peculiarity in the human organization. If so, we must imagine some reversionfor the Chess-Player plays precisely as a man would?tot.
These ideas) once entertained, are sufficient of themselves, to suggest the notion of a nman in the interior.
A few more imperceptible steps lead us, finally, to the
result. The Automaton plays with his left arm, because
under no other circumstances could the man within play
with his right-a desideratum of course. Let us, for example, imagine the Automaton to play with his right
arm. To reach the machinery which moves the arm,
and which we have before explained to lie just beneath
the shoulder, it would be necessary for the man within
either to use his right arm in an exceedingly painful
and awkward position, (viz. brought up close to his
body and tightly compressed between his body and the
side of the Automaton,) or else to use his left arm
brought across his breast. In neither case could he act
with the requisite ease or precision. On the contrary,
the Automaton playing, as it actually does, with the
left arm, all difficulties vanish. The right arm of the
manrt within is brought across his breast, and his right
fingers act, without any constraint, upon the machinery
in the shoulder of the figure.
We do not believe that any reasonable objections can
be urged against this solution of the Automaton Chess Player.
CRITICAL NOTICES.
DRAKE-I-IALLECK.
The Culprit Fay, and other Poems, by Joseph Rodman
Drake. New York: George Dearborn.
.tlnwtick Castle, with other Poems, by Fitz Greene Halleck. New York: George Dearborn.
Before entering upon the detailed notice which we propose of the volumes before us, we wish to speak a few
words in regard to the present state ofAmerican criticism.
It must be visible to all who meddle with literary
matters, that of late years a thorough revolution has
been effected in the censorship of our press. That this
revolution is infinitely for the worse we believe. There
was a time, it is true, when we cringed to foreign opinion-let us even say when we paid a most servile deference to British critical dicta. That an American
book could, by any possibility, be worthy perusal, was
an idea by no means extensively prevalent in the land;
and if we were induced to read at all the productions
of our native writers, it was only after repeated assurances from England that such productions were not
altogether contemptible. But there was, at all events,
a shadow of excuse, and a slight basis of reason for a
subserviency so grotesque. Even now, perhaps, it
would not be far wrong to assert that such basis of
reason may still exist. Let us grant that in many of
the abstract sciences-that even in Theology, in Medicine, in Law, in Oratory, in the Mechanical Arts, we
have no competitors whatever, still nothing but the
most egregious national vanity would assign us a place,
in the matter of Polite Literature, upon a level with
the elder and riper climes of Europe, the earliest steps
of whose children are among the groves of magnificently
endowed Academics, and whose innumerable men of
leisure, and of consequent learning, drink daily from
those august fountains of inspiration which burst around
them every where from out the tombs of their immortal
dead, and from out their hoary and trophied monuments
of chivalry and song. In paying then, as a nation, a
respectful and not undue deference to a supremacy
rarely questioned but by prejudice or ignorance, we
should, of course, be doing nothing more than acting
in a rational manner. The excess of our subserviency
was blameable-but, as we have before said, this very
excess might have found a shadow of excuse in the
strict justice, if properly regulated, of the principle from
which it issued. Not so, however, with our present
follies. We are becoming boisterous and arrogant in
the pride of a too speedily assumed literary freedom.
We throw off, with the most presumptuous and unmeaning hauteur, all deference whatever to foreign
opinion-we forget, in the puerile inflation of vanity,
that the world is the true theatre of the biblical histriowse get up a hue and cry about the necessity of en couraging native writers of merit-we blindly fancy
that we can accomplish this by indiscriminate puffing
of good, bad, and indifferent, without taking the trouble
to consider that what we choose to denominate encour agement is thus, by its general application, rendered
precisely the reverse. In a word, so far from being
ashamed of the many disgraceful literary failures to
which our own inordinate vanities and misapplied pa triotism have lately given birth, and so far from deeply
lamenting that these daily puerilities are of home manu facture, we adhere pertinaciously to our original blindly
conceived idea, and thus often find ourselves involved
in the gross~)aradox of liking a stupid book the better,
because, sure enough, its stupidity is American.*
Deeply lamenting this unjustifiable state of public
* This charge of indiscriminate puffing wilt, of course, only
apply to the general character of our criticism-there are some
noble exceptions. We wish also especially to discriminate be tween those notices of new works which are intended merely to
call public attention to them, and deliberate criticism on the
works themselves.
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