For example, consider this figure, which he used in the village
"Address" referred to with such candid complacency in the title-page
above quoted--"like the topmost topaz of an ancient tower."
Please read it again; contemplate it; measure it; walk around it;
climb up it; try to get at an approximate realization of the size of it.
Is the fellow to that to be found in literature, ancient or modern,
foreign or domestic, living or dead, drunk or sober? One notices
how fine and grand it sounds. We know that if it was loftily uttered,
it got a noble burst of applause from the villagers; yet there isn't
a ray of sense in it, or meaning to it.
McClintock finished his education at Yale in 1843, and came to
Hartford on a visit that same year. I have talked with men who at
that time talked with him, and felt of him, and knew he was real.
One needs to remember that fact and to keep fast hold of it;
it is the only way to keep McClintock's book from undermining one's
faith in McClintock's actuality.
As to the book. The first four pages are devoted to an inflamed eulogy
of Woman--simply woman in general, or perhaps as an institution
--wherein, among other compliments to her details, he pays a unique
one to her voice. He says it "fills the breast with fond alarms,
echoed by every rill." It sounds well enough, but it is not true.
After the eulogy he takes up his real work and the novel begins.
Pages:
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