With the
innate sentiments of a kind of aboriginal human nature Mr. Judd was
at home; with the practical working of every-day motives he seemed
strangely unfamiliar. It is just here that Mr. Trowbridge's strength
and originality lie; but, with that not uncommon tendency to overvalue
qualities that we do not possess, and to attempt their display, to the
neglect, and sometimes at the cost, of others quite as valuable, but
which seem cheap, because their exercise is easy and habitual,--and
therefore, we may be sure, natural and pleasing,--he insists on being a
little metaphysical and over-fine. What he means for his more
elevated characters are tiresome with something of that melodramatic
sentimentality with which Mr. Dickens has infected so much of the
lighter literature of the day. Here and there the style suffers from
that overmuchness of unessential detail and that exaggeration of
particulars which Mr. Dickens brought into fashion and seems bent on
wearing out of it,--a style which is called graphic and poetical by
those only who do not see that it is the cheap substitute, in all
respects equal to real plate, (till you try to pawn it for lasting
fame,) introduced by writers against time, or who forget that to be
graphic is to tell most with fewest penstrokes, and to be poetical is
to suggest the particular in the universal. We earnestly hope, that,
instead of trying to do what no one can do well, Mr.
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