SOURCE: "Methods of Composition," in The Sources and Influence of the Novels of Charles Brockden Brown, Vantage Press, 1950, pp. 189-206.

[In the following essay, Wiley appraises the plots, characters, and style of Brown's novels, contending that his plots are "original, exceptional, and forceful," although they lack coherence. Wiley also notes that Brown's style may seem inflated, but that it reflects the "prevalent pedantry of the times."]

The plots of Brown's novels are original, exceptional and forceful, though defective in unity of design. Each main narrative consists of a series of episodes slightly connected with each other, but all connected to the purpose and developing it. They are like clothes hanging on a line, grouped, however, as a good housewife would hang them. A contemporary of Brown, Royall Tyler, said of him:

He never mastered the art of fiction well enough to produce a book that deserved anything more than the name of narrative.

Brown may have been negligent of his plots, but he certainly was never at a loss for a breath-taking adventure or for creating suspense,—not inferior to Cooper in this respect. The incidents of his novels are many of them dramatic, yet he made little attempt to dramatize his plots. He makes a conscious effort in Edgar Huntly. Dramatic terms are used in the story; for example,—

To comprehend it (the "drama in which his mind was busy") demands penetration into the recesses of his soul…. Was the narrative of Clithero the web of imposture or the raving of insanity? … He had appeared. The strange being is again upon the stage." "I was left to mark the progress of the drama…. At length the drama is brought to an imperfect close, and the series of events that absorbed my faculties ("my mind had been the theatre") … has terminated in repose.

A few other times the words—drama, stage and scene—are found here and in his other novels, as in Wieland: "this the stage on which that enemy of man (Carwin) showed himself for a moment unmasked."

These words of the author are relevant in this connection, when the press was publishing each part as fast as he could supply it:

I commenced something in the form of a Romance. I had at first no definitive conceptions of my design. As my pen proceeded forward, my invention was tasked, and the materials that it afforded were arranged and digested. Fortunately I continued to view this scheme in the same light in which it had at first presented itself. Time therefore did not diminish its attractions. The facility I experienced in composition, and the perception of daily progress, encouraged me, and my task was finished on the last day of December…. It was at first written in a hasty and inaccurate way. Before I can submit it to a printer, or even satisfactorily rehearse it to a friend, it must be wholly transcribed. I am at present engaged in this employment. I am afraid as much time will be required by it, as was necessary to the original composition.¹

One might think he had in mind the words of Sterne when he began Tristram Shandy, "with no real idea of how it was to turn out." He also said in that novel (Chapter 19, p. 2): "Writers had need look before them, to keep up the spirit and connection of what they have in hand."

In strong contrast to this obvious irregularity of plot is Brown's ever-present, ever-evolving moral or psychological purpose, as illustrated in the treatment of Clithero mentioned above. The author always had a purpose, if not always a plan. Griswold wrote: "the metaphysical unity and consistency of his novels are apparent to all readers familiar with psychological phenomena."² This predetermined purpose or aim has the advantage of giving such an air of truth that his readers almost forget that they are not reading statements of some serious matter of fact and are unconscious of the abnormal phases of the subject. Brown "is inferior to all great story tellers in his sacrifice of universal truth to the situation, the moment,"³ remarked Blake. It would seem that Brown had not sacrificed the truth, but rather had not sufficiently elaborated it or had too many truths.

"In sheer power of gripping plots and masterful climaxes Brown has few superiors. His weakness, on the other hand, lies in his inability to resolve his plots and scenes into their realizable effects," said David Lee Clark in his Introduction to Edgar Huntly.

One reason for Brown's lack of plot unity was his not having in mind the completed story in the beginning, which led to necessary changes of plan in the prosecution of the work. Brown completed Wieland and three years after the romance itself wrote an additional chapter to clear up the unfinished incidents as promised at the close of the story and put the finishing touches on several characters—Clara and Pleyel, Carwin, Stuart and Maxwell. Another continuation of Wieland was made—Memoirs of Carwin, the Biloquist, a fragment, of which Brown says in the Advertisement of Wieland:

The memoirs of Carwin, alluded to at the conclusion of the work, will be published or suppressed according to the reception which is given to the present attempt.

In similar fashion, Brown finished Arthur Mervyn with its theme of yellow fever and later wrote another volume to conclude the incidents of the first and to give Arthur time and opportunity to perform his benevolences. When Arthur has completed his projects and knows not that Achsa loves him and that he loves her, Dr. Stevens apprises him of the fact in dramatic terms: "This scene is quite new…. This is a nec essary part of the drama," showing Brown's intention to unwind the story with the expected love-marriage ending. The episodical style in this book was due to the fact that Brown had published the early chapters as a series, as he had done with earlier writings, like The Rhapsodist, The Rights of Women and Sky-Walk. So this style became a habit. Besides, it was found effective in sustaining the interest of his readers. Parts of several of his novels were published in magazines serially, which accounts for the large number of striking incidents or crises at intervals,—also for the lack of well-developed plot construction and likewise for the author's lack of time for sufficient revision and transcription.

Dunlap, with whom Brown lived for a time and who knew him better than anyone else did, testified to his methods:

He began to write a novel after having only determined upon one leading circumstance, character or idea, and trusted to the growth of one incident from another, and the appropriate sentiments from the incidents. One volume would be finished and printed before he had formed any plan for the beginning of the second, or any plan for the continuation, developement or denouement of the story…. It is very evident that this unsystematic mode of composition must give a motley appearance…. The parts must occasionally be disproportioned to each other, and incidents imagined which excite great expectations in the reader, and involve the story in mystery, which the author trusting to after thought for the explanation or the sequel, and not finding … any adequate solution of difficulty or termination of adventure, the event either does not answer the expectation raised, or the reader is put off with the intimation of a continuation at a future time.⁴

There are episodes which seem irrevelant, as it were, to the plot because they are based on the author's experiences and opinions. Brown was inexpert in portraying familiar characters against his real backgrounds. The portrayal of unusual characters with reality of settings produces an effect of confusion at times, seen not only in his construction of incidents, but in his designs.

Confusion is also occasioned by the use of the epistolary method, which requires a change of viewpoint with each different letter writer. Clara Wieland tells the Wieland story, but there are introduced confessions of Wieland and Carwin in their own persons. In Arthur Mervyn, Arthur relates the history of his own life and of the yellow fever; Dr. Stevens opens both parts of the story and enters at other times; Welbeck's two or three confessions are within Arthur's story; the early life of Arthur is told by a country neighbor woman and then he gives his version of it; in his attempts to alleviate the final distresses of all characters, there is conversation, presenting opposing viewpoints. Despite these "venial faults (dramatic bounds of time and action) the beauties of Arthur Mervyn are splendid,"⁵ said Dunlap.

An additional cause of Brown's unskilfully wrought plots, involving cumulative incidents, unfinished incidents and narrative within narrative, was the celerity with which he wrote. Dunlap said that, in the year 1799, Brown had begun five novels, all of which were in a state of progression. Critics agreed that he had no time to perfect either plots or style, due to haste of composition.

The spur that set Brown on his extraordinary spree of writing five novels at once, after Wieland was begun, was the immediate popularity at home and abroad of its first chapters. Doubtless, these novels contain much material from his earlier writings or from his pre-contemplated plans and even outlines, as from social and political treatises, evident in Wieland and Ormand, from Sky-Walk in Edgar Huntly, from the Romance of Sophia and Jessy the Zisca incident in Wieland and so on. Brown's writing of all but one of his novels simultaneously speaks in a more forceful way than can any encomium upon the varied talents of the author. It was the exhilirating realization that he had now found a proper medium of expression for the teeming thoughts that circled in his brain and his exuberant youthfulness displaying itself with the thrill of accomplishment.

In a letter to his brother Armit, Brown wrote:

Some time since I bargained with the publisher of Wieland for a new performance, part of which only was written, and the publication commencing immediately, I was obliged to apply with the utmost diligence to the pen, in order to keep pace with the press…. I call my book Ormond, or the Secret Witness. I hope to finish the writing and the publication together before new year's day, when I shall have a breathing spell.⁶

As a commentary justifying Brown's rapidity of writing are words from Edgar Huntly:

In proportion as I gain power over words, shall I lose dominion over sentiments. In proportion as my tale is deliberate and slow, the incidents and motives which it is designed to exhibit will be imperfectly revived and obscurely portrayed.⁷

Although Brown usually contrived thrilling incidents, his object was not the relation of the incidents but the recording of impressions. He uses the word "sentiments."

Scott's method a few years later reflects that of Brown. He said after completing the second volume of Woodstock:

Now I haven't the slightest idea how the story is to be wound up to a catastrophe…. I never could lay down a plan…. I only tried to make that which I was actually writing diverting and interesting, leaving the rest to fate…. When I chain my mind to ideas which are purely imaginary, … I think away the whole vivacity and spirit of my original conception, and the results are cold, tame, and spiritless…. Wrote to the end of a chapter, and know … no more than a man in the moon what comes next…. I love to have the press thumping, clattering, and banging in my rear; it creates the necessity which almost always makes me work best.⁸

Writing with the publishers always calling for copy forbade Brown's rounding out events, mysteries, incidents and characters, no doubt to his discomfiture. The words of Clara with regard to her relation by letter of the account of the Wieland family well applies to Brown himself:

Yet I will persist to the end. My narrative may be invaded by inaccuracy and confusion; but, if I live no longer, I will, at least, live to complete it. What but ambiguities, abruptnesses, and dark transitions, can be expected from the historian who is, at the same time, the sufferer of these disasters?⁹

One may readily speak of Brown as a sufferer, because of his lifelong uncertainty of health and his foreknowledge of consumption ever in the offing. However much the versatility and industry of the author may be admired, the loss of excellence and reputation that it occasions him and the loss of amusement and instruction to his readers must be forever deplored (Dunlap).

Many of Brown's characters are living, assertive beings. A few act as if they were the puppets of superior powers or the victims of a vague and dreadful fatality, almost subservient to the circumstances that surround them, which accords with the author's purpose to study character in unusual situations. He identifies himself with the working of their minds and develops each as a specific, psychological personality troubling himself little to individualize them in the details of their outward lives. He uses them as material in his hands to work out his purposes. In accordance with the characteristics of solitariness, mystery and gloom of his own temperament, he loves to present the heart as desolate, foreboding, self-dependent and at times plotting evil or good. When he would exhibit strength of mind or purpose to most advantage, he takes away all external succour and encircles the person with circumstances that rouse vague apprehensions of danger or uncertainty. The individual must then estimate the approaching evil, comprehend its worst consequences and act accordingly, thus revealing the latent, potential virtue within him. Clara Wieland and Constantia Dudley, for example, have loving, gentle natures, but have also thinking minds, full of resourcefulness, constancy and courage. Arthur Mervyn with no money does many helpful services. Edgar Huntly reasons on the behavior of the panther and on his chances and on the necessity of killing the Indians, with no human aid at hand. Brown's women are equal to his men. Nearly all of them show minds of their own and somewhat of womanly devotion, helpfulness and self-sacrifice. Clara is almost as much the heroine of Wieland as her brother is the hero, in her education, independence, ability to meet situations, love-life and authorship. In comparison with Brown's female characters, a generation later Cooper's women are so limited by narrow conventions as to be insipid, helpless and ill-defined; to use his own phrase, they belong to the type "of religion and female decorum." They think, act and talk with fastidious propriety.

The principal characters of Brown's earlier novels are simple, impelled or motivated by some one ruling passion, which sets them apart, as it were, from their fellow men and drives them irresistibly to their doom, as Wieland, Carwin, Ormond, Welbeck and Clithero. Character grouping, whether in the social life of the city or country or in happy home relations, is a requisite for the true novel. Brown held himself aloof and probably did not perceive the value of it. He says, "my powers do not enable me to place the common place characters around me in an interesting or amusing point of view."¹⁰ By nature and training, Brown was unacquainted with the complex relations of life, which are a necessary preparation to a novelist who would attain effective character grouping. His characters are more disposed to soliloquize than to talk. They deliberate. They bring before the mind all the pros and cons regarding a subject, which reveals their author's legal training, before they finally decide to act.

This process of reasoning, making mention of a thousand minute particulars, at times becomes tedious and seems affected; yet this being the way in which the larger part of the world reasons, Brown has convinced his readers of the truth of his facts and produces an atmosphere of circumstantiality. A modern novelist, like the dramatist, develops his characters more by action; but Brown more often has his characters make themselves known by their self-analyses and explanations, interspersed by his own comments. He uses dialogue sparingly, which correlates with the private musings of his characters. However, his chief characters speak in dialogue as befits them under proper conditions. Many of their conversations employ the thou-and-thee, old-style Quaker forms. One of the most natural conversations is that between Arthur Mervyn and the unlearned, indigent person from whom he tries to learn who owned the house where he was locked in. Arthur inquires of the name, profession, whether married. The man replies:

It would be an odd thing if he was married. An old fellow, with one foot in the grave—comical enough for him to git a vife!" Concerning the death of the baby, he says: "She (the mother) is not quite out of the dumps yet…. I'll war'n' they'll have enough of them before they die.¹¹

In his later works, Brown attempted a somewhat wider range of characters and personalities of mixed and complicated natures, rather than agents of a single, dominant control. Constantia Dudley, Queen Mab, Arthur Mervyn and Edgar Huntly are quite original in conception and evolution. Though at times the women are sentimental and weakly portrayed, they are on the whole superior in strength and in reality to most of the women characters in the novels of the time; for example, Achsa Fielding in Arthur Mervyn. Mrs. Fielding is one of the author's choice characters, she who is the modern, refined, sensitive, well-educated woman, sharing as heroine with Eliza, the simple, unspoiled country girl. This is a case where an American, Arthur, marries an immigrant English lady, who is also a Jewess. The English seem to have become congenial and reconciled to the Americans soon after the Revolution; or, perhaps, Brown is trying to help bring about better relations between them. Evidently, he chose the Hebrew name Achsa from the Biblical character, which indicates his familiarity with the Bible,—a fact that comes out in several instances.

Sometimes Brown introduces too many and too unimportant characters for a single performance, as Harwick, Waring, the Walpoles, Keyser, Austin, Capper, in Arthur Mervyn; and important personages disappear altogether, as Mrs. Wentworth, Wallace and Eliza, abandoned both by the author and the hero, in the same novel. Again characters causing new complications are introduced unnecessarily, as Stuart, Maxwell and Dashwood, in Wieland. From a general study of Brown's novels, one can see that he is limited in the creation of characters and accepts some standardized models.

"Like some other dealers in fiction," Brown says, "I find it easier to give new names to my visionary friends, and vary their condition, than to introduce a genuine diversity into their characters."¹² He brings in a large number of characters, but fashions fully only the opposing principals. Even in the case of those most fully treated, the treatment is chiefly mental to accord with his purposes and themes.

Supposing inheritances in names may be made a game, whether true or false. Fannie Burney's Evelina may have given Brown ideas besides the father-daughter incident,—as Arthur and the Villars family from the benevolent Arthur Villars, Louisa Conway from Lady Louisa, followed by the authoress of "Sabina" of her book Louisa, Lovel, mentioned but once by Brown, from her Lovel, and Clemenza from Clement. The same names are used in different novels: Arthur Mervyn and Arthur Wiatte in Edgar Huntly, in which Mary Waldegrave occurs; in Ormond are two Marys—Mary Mansfield and Mary Ridgefield; Talbot in Ormond and Jane Talbot; Watson, Wentworth, Lucy and Betsy in Ormond and Arthur Mervyn; Sarsefield in Ormond and in Edgar Huntly; Clara Wieland and Clara Howard. Following this author the name Wentworth is used by Dana in Tom Thornton. A few names have been noted heretofore.

In 1751, Mrs. Eliza Haywood published a novel, Miss Betsy Thoughtless. Betsy was of a scatter-brain nature, falling into trouble, flattered by lovers, meeting Mr. Trueworth, but losing him for a time by associating with a virtueless friend. She enters into a sham marriage with the worthless rascal and is finally rescued by Mr. Trueworth. There may be a connection between her and Betty Lawrence in Arthur Mervyn; she was a loud, lover-possessed, ignorant person, whom Arthur's father was enticed into marrying, causing Arthur to leave home. The two Elizas in the same novel may take their name from Mrs. Haywood's given name, if Brown knew her novel.

Characters must be representative men and women to make them lasting fictional personalities. To invest them with the illusion of reality, whether factual or fictitious, they must be individualized by certain personal traits that distinguish them from all other representatives or members of their class. To make them interesting, they must act their parts,—be dynamic, not static. A few of Brown's best characters seem to measure up: Wieland, Ormond, Constantia, Dudley, Huntly, Queen Mab, Arthur Mervyn, Stanley, Carwin. These and, perhaps, others have been copied and handed down by later writers,—by Godwin, Shelley, Mrs. Shelley, Scott, Irving, Cooper, Poe, Maria Edgeworth, Wallace, Ainsworth, Meredith, of lasting fame.

Repetitions, confusions and inconclusions are not hard to find. Brown commits the fault of having two somnambulists in Edgar Huntly. Arthur Mervyn resembles both young Lodi and Clavering, with little reason for the fact in the story; and the purpose of the cockloft in Welbeck's home is unexplained. The author commenced a new novel before having completed a former one, thus repeating the same ideas without knowing it. Duplicate stories are found in the circumstances of Edgar Huntly and his two sisters and in those of Philip Stanley and his sisters. All are left orphans and provided for in each case by an uncle; but the young men are early compelled to shift for themselves. Each finds a friend and instructor in an English immigrant, who finally returns home to England, marries a former lady friend, a second marriage for her, and returns again to America.

The brother of Jane Talbot is like the brother of Mrs. Lorimer, in Edgar Huntly. Each recklessly squanders the patrimony of his father and tries to rob his sister. Jane says of her brother:

My brother's temper grew more unmanageable as he increased in years…. I do not remember a single direct kindness that I ever received from him; but 1 remember innumerable ill offices and contempts. Still, there was some inexplicable charm in the mere tie of kindred, which made me more deplore his errors, exult in his talents, rejoice in his success, and take a deeper interest in his concerns than in those of any other person.¹³

Mrs. Lorimer had a twin-brother, … but the powers that in one case were exerted in the cause of virtue were, in the other, misapplied to sordid and flagitious purposes. Arthur Wiatte … had ever been the object of his sister's affection…. All her kindness was repaid by a stern and inexorable hatred…. He exceeded in depravity all that has been imputed to the arch-foe of mankind…. He seemed to relish no food but pure unadulterated evil. He rejoiced in proportion to the depth of that distress of which he was the author…. At their (parents') death the bulk of their patrimony devolved upon him. This he speedily consumed in gaming and riot.¹⁴

Parallel incidents are found in the brother of Mary Wilmot, in Clara Howard, and in Waldegrave, the friend of Huntly. Each receives and deposits money, dies, leaves an inheritance to his sister, and each deposit is sought by a claimant. Waldegrave left certain property in the care of Huntly. "It was money, and consisted of deposits at the Bank of North America. The amount was little short of eight thousand dollars…. His sister was his only kindred, and she is now in possession of it." Weymouth, a stranger to Huntly, on inquiring about the property, says:

I invested the greatest part of my property in a cargo of wine from Madeira. The remainder I turned into a bill of exchange for seven thousand five hundred dollars…. To him (Waldegrave) therefore I determined to transmit this bill…. I remember when we parted, he was poor. He used to lament that his scrupulous integrity precluded him from all the common roads to wealth…. His religious duty compelled him to seek his livelihood by teaching a school of blacks…. It scarcely supplied the necessities of nature, and was reduced sometimes even below that standard by his frequent indisposition." (Huntly replies:) "I was not only unapprised of any other employment of his time, but had not the slightest suspicion of his possessing any property besides his clothes and books.¹⁵

No conclusion is given of the return of the money to Weymouth; and the difficulty of accounting for Morton's false claim in Clara Howard is unsolved. The brother of Mary Wilmot was drowned and he "was found to be credited in the Bank of P———for so large a sum as five thousand dollars." This credit had been given two years before his death. "This money was the gift of Mr. Sedley to my brother." His intimate associates had never heard the slightest intimation of his possessing anything beyond the scanty income of his school. His expenses were kept within his meager salary. Sometime afterward, Morton, a former acquaintance of Stanley, appeared and sought Wilmot, saying,

His property he partly invested in a ship and her cargo, and partly in a bill of exchange for five thousand dollars. This bill he transmitted to his friend Wilmot.¹⁶

There is practically no true humor in Brown's novels to relieve the prevailing seriousness. The few attempts, particularly in Arthur Mervyn, are failures. One passage in the report of Brown's visit to Rockaway serves as an unconscious criticism in this respect, of his novels written later:

As to our talk at dinner, there was perfect good humour, and a good deal of inclination to be witty, but I do not recollect a single good thing that deserves to be recorded.¹⁷

Dunlap said of Brown's humor: "He had no portion in himself, nor any adequate conception of it in others."

Clara Wieland contrasts herself, Catharine and Pleyel with her brother, in relation to humor:

The images that visited us were blithesome and gay…. 1 scarcely ever knew him to laugh. He never accompanied the lawless mirth of his companions with more than a smile.

Quite a number of expressions refer to the mirth of Pleyel: "His gayety had flown…. His vivacity had indeed been damped; … His conversation abounded with novelty. His gayety was almost boisterous; … His conceptions were ardent but ludicrous, and his memory … was an inexhaustible fund of entertainment." … (He said) "They may doze away their days on the banks of the Schuykill; but, as for me, I go in the next vessel."¹⁸

Pleyel notices Carwin's effect upon Clara, who resents his banter:

It was a hint to rally me upon my prepossessions, and to amuse us with a thousand ludicrous anecdotes…. His conversation was occasionally visited by gleams of his ancient vivacity…. This would … call forth new railleries. His mirth, when exerted upon this topic, was the source of the bitterest vexation…. He was as whimsical and jestful as ever, but he was not happy…. The levity which had formerly characterized the behaviour of this man tended to obscure the greatness of his sentiments…. Pleyel was a devoted lover, but … a man of cold resolves and exquisite sagacity. To deceive him would be the sweetest triumph I had ever enjoyed (because of his distrust of her honor and his fierce upbraiding)." (He said), "The spirit of mischievous gayety possessed me. I proceeded on tip-top … till I was able to overlook your shoulder.¹⁹

Dr. Stevens investigated Arthur's boyhood and heard tales from a countrywoman:

Here, in the chimney-corner, seated on a block, I found Arthur busily engaged in knitting stockings! I thought this a whimsical employment for a young active man. I told him so, … but he smiled in my face, and answered, without the least discomposure, 'Just as whimsical a business for a young active woman. Pray, did you never knit a stocking? … You see, though a man, I use your privilege, and prefer knitting yarn to threshing my brain with a book or the barn-floor with a flail.' … 'I wonder,' said I, contemptuously, 'you do not put on the petticoat as well as handle the needle.' … 'Do not wonder,' he replied, 'it is because I hate a petticoat encumbrance as much as I love warm feet'.²⁰

The foolish colloquy of the ignorant continues in her report. Arthur, in speaking of his having left home and making up his bundle, says:

My whole stock of linen consisted of three check shirts. Part of my winter evenings' employment, since the death of my mother, consisted in knitting my own stockings. Of these I had three pair.²¹

Brown uses a sort of humor when he has Dr. Stevens employ a bit of ridicule or sarcasm to open Arthur's eyes to his standing with Achsa:

She can find nothing in you to esteem! … Incredible, indeed! You, who are loathsome in your person, an idiot in your understanding, a villain in your morals! deformed! withered! vain, stupid, and malignant. That such a one should choose you for an idol!

to which Arthur replies, "Pray, my friend, jest not.²²

This statement may smack of humor or irony: "He was too old a bird to be decoyed into the net by such chaff,"²³ speaking of Jamieson's financial dealings with Welbeck.

It has been said that the greatest novelist must be essentially a humorist, just as the greatest romancer must be essentially a poet. Certainly Brown was lacking in humor. He had tried his hand at poetry and one can see poetical phraseology on many pages of his novels, noticeably in his descriptions of nature.

The style of Brown's novels partakes of the style of those of his contemporaries. He put great pains on his choice of words and on the formation of his sentences, which emphasize the prevalent pedantry of the times in letters exchanged between friends and in the books that were written. His style contrasts singularly with his natural simplicity of taste; and his care-free composition contrasts ofttimes with the preparation which he made in the study of words and sentences. For Dunlap tells how Brown used to copy in his Journal letters sent and received, besides other material, to improve his composition. This policy of letter-copying is mentioned by Brown when he has Huntly write to Mary Waldegrave of her brother's letters:

The scheme of transcribing, for thy use, all the letters which, during his short but busy life, I received from him … occurred to my thoughts.²⁴

On the whole Brown's words accord with the subject matter,—solemn diction for morbid incidents, sentimental words for expression of feelings, heady words for psychological introspection. Latin derivatives are used where Anglo-Saxon words would have been just as forceful. Many unusual words and peculiar combinations of words are to be found. The impression that the words make remains with the reader rather than the words themselves, unless he rereads for the words' sake.

His language was downright prose—the natural diction of the man himself—earnest—full of substantial good sense, clearness, and simplicity;—very sober and very plain, so as to leave only the meaning upon the mind. Nobody ever remembered the words of Charles Brockden Brown; nobody ever thought of the arrangement; yet nobody ever forgot what they conveyed.²⁵

Some sentences are lengthy, run-on and awkward in grammatical construction. As if to offset the heaviness of such sentences, the author has fallen into the opposite extreme, using short, condensed statements, questions, exclamations and elliptical expressions, sometimes following one another in a series for a whole page, until they become monotonous.

The word bombastic was applied in a former chapter to Revolutionary-period writers' language. Like a goodly number of their predecessors, Brown does use inflated speech and magniloquent words when he wishes to make his characters seem impressive and learned. Their conversations often sound like set speeches. The language is then verbose, melodramatic or absurdly sentimental. At times one feels the incongruity between the strong, passionate, terrific enterprises of the characters and the pedantic language in which they are presented. He suddenly realizes that the author is doing the speaking.

"Simple, heart-felt expressions generally serve realism best," some one has said. Brown claimed to aim at realism; yet his fondness for long words and his avalanches of sentimental words are conspicuous on many a page. A few of his favorites are listed. Ruminate is used scores of times in place of think, which by inference has that meaning; but its frequent occurrence gives the impression that the speaker is putting on. Among words to watch, in alphabetical order, are adscititious, ambiguities, ambiguous, ambiguousness, animadvert, asperities, aspersions, assiduities, assiduous, attemper, austerities, bemazed, caprice, capricious, circuities, contumacious, conversible, deliquium, ductile (to her will), ebullitions, flagitious, immutable, incongruousness, indefatigable, inexhaustible, inexplicable, insuperability, interrogatories, lucubrations, mellifluent, metamorphosed, mutable, mutate, mutations, nugatory, obsequiously, obsequiousness, opprobrious, panicful, pregnant (of meaning), presages, prognostics, prothonatory, punctilio, punctiliousness, pusillanimity, ratiocination, remediless, repugnant, sedulously, specious, spirituous, umbrage, undulation, unplausible.

Besides these there are hundreds of other words of four and five syllables and some of six and seven syllables. It is significant to recall how authors whom Brown influenced almost invariably used a score or more of his most unusual words. Nearly half of these listed words are found in Caleb Williams, showing either Godwin's influence or a common inheritance among writers.

Critics of Brown's language denounced it as melodramatic, involved, ornate, stiff and stilted. One would not want it otherwise, except that he did not take time to do as well as he knew—to substitute different words for those he uses so often. The so-called simple language of today would have made his writings out of place in his generation. A person need only read the fiction and the poetry of the years immediately succeeding Brown's short span of life to know that their language was far more ornate in expression, involved in construction grammatically and more impassioned in conversation than that of the present.

William H. Prescott, who wrote a memoir of Charles Brockden Brown for Jared Sparks' American Biography (1834), only twenty-four years after his death, in discussing his language, said:

It must be remembered, too, that his novels were his first productions, thrown off with careless profusion, and exhibiting many of the defects of an immature mind, which longer experience and practice might have corrected.

He quoted a few of Brown's phrases—"fraught with the persuasion," "appended to it," "hoarser aspirations," "on recovering from deliquium," "fraught with the apprehension that my life was endangered," "his brain seemed to swell beyond its continent," "by a common apparatus, that lay beside my bed, I could instantly produce a light." "By this last circumlocution he meant to say that he had a tinderbox." Elsewhere Brown says, "a taper, a flint, tinder, and steel."

The spot-light might be turned on Prescott. By this circumlocutory remark, he said that Brown was born a Quaker:

He was descended from a highly respectable family, whose ancestors were of that estimable sect, who came over with William Penn to seek an asylum, where they might worship their Creator unmolested in the meek and humble spirit of their own faith.²⁶

Here are additional typical Brownesque expressions. Arthur Mervyn struck his head and made a gash: "My ensanguined visage … my clothes were moistened with the unwelcome effusion." "My horse stood near, docile and obsequious." "This action was sufficiently conformable to my prognostics." "Washing was her trade"—the trade of kind Sarah Baxter—she "punctually visited the Dudleys once a week, and carried home with her whatever stood in need of ablution." "The voice was that of Constantia (after killing Ormond). It penetrated to my heart like an ice-bolt."

Corrode in literature is a pedigreed word. "The vexations and tumults of public affairs, which too frequently corrode the heart and vitiate the taste," are words of Mrs. Radcliffe. Godwin used "corrosive bitterness" in Caleb Williams. Clara Wieland says, when considering Carwin's words and Pleyel's suspicions, "But now my bosom was corroded by anxiety. I was visited by dread of unknown dangers." "Mr. Dudley's … features (were) corroded by his ceaseless melancholy." Brown said of himself, "Forget that any latent anguish or corroding sorrow" disquiet me, quoted more fully in Chapter I. After Brown, Godwin says, "corrode his vitals" and "corroding cancer" in Mandeville, and Maturin in Fatal Revenge says, "corroded mind" and "erosions of conscience."

Adders, vipers and scorpions slide through the pages of novels. "Viper in my bosom" of Caleb Williams becomes "adders lodged in my bosom" in Wieland, repeated by "viper in my bosom" in Mandeville. In Tom Jones (Fielding) many years earlier are the expressions: "a scorpion in her bosom" and "that wicked viper which I have so long nourished in my bosom." Lady Shelley in The Last Man carries on the tradition: "His praises were so many adder's stings infixed in my vulnerable breast," "and ideas, horrid as furies, cruel as vipers."

In relation to Brown's style, the words of Blake are appropriate:

His books, if they seem to us the crude expression of youth, are the expression of a literature's youth no less than the author's…. His language seems to us prolix and pretentious only if we go to it direct, instead of from the reading of his British predecessors…. Moreover, Brockden Brown was found remarkable—even in his day and generation,—for writing in a style that is nervously instinct with repressed energy. His sentences are short, like the modern writer's, monotonously so; but experiment, even literary experiment, is better than stagnation.²⁷

Notes

¹ Brown, His Journal, in Dunlap, op. cit., I, 107.

² Griswold, The Prose Writers of America, 29.

³ Blake, "Brockden Brown and the Novel," in The Sewanee Review, XVIII, 436.

⁴ Dunlap, op. cit., I, 258, 259.

⁵Ibid., II, 29.

⁶ Brown, Letter to his brother Armit, New York, Dec. 20th, 1798, in Dunlap, op. cit., II, 93.

⁷Edgar Huntly, 1-2.

⁸ Scott, Journal, 1825-1832, 117, 122, 151.

⁹Wieland, 166.

¹⁰ Brown, Record of a Trip to Rockaway, in Dunlap, op. cit., I, 66.

¹¹Arthur Mervyn, I, 60-1.

¹² Brown, "Alcuin," in Dunlap, op. cit., I, 74.

¹³Jane Talbot, 9.

¹⁴Edgar Huntly, 43, 44, 46.

¹⁵Ibid., 147, 150, 148, 149.

¹⁶Clara Howard, 320, 389, 322.

¹⁷ Brown, Report of a Visit to Rockaway, in Dunlap, op. cit., I, 66.

¹⁸Wieland, 42, 43, 67, 68, 44-5, 64.

¹⁹Wieland, 81, 89, 96, 202, 229, 143.

²⁰Arthur Mervyn, II, 18.

²¹Ibid., I, 24.

²²Arthur Mervyn, II, 217.

²³Ibid., II, 29.

²⁴Edgar Huntly, 135.

²⁵ Neal, in Blackwood's Magazine, XVI, 421, October, 1824.

²⁶ Prescott, "Memoir of Charles Brockden Brown," in Sparks, Library of American Biography, I, 119-80.

²⁷ Blake, "Brockden Brown and the Novel," in The Sewanee Review XVIII, 435.