When "Peg Woffington" first fell upon us, a dozen years ago or so,
Humdrum opened his eyes: it was like setting one's teeth in a juicy pear
fresh from the warm sunshine. Then came "Christie Johnstone," a perfect
pearl of its kind, in which we recognize an important contribution to
one class of romance. If ever the literature of the fishing-coast shall
be compiled, it will be found to be scanty, but superlative; let us
suggest that it shall open with Lucy Larcom's "Poor Lone Hannah," the
most touching and tearful of the songs of New-England life,--followed by
Christie Johnstone's night at sea among the blue-lights and the nets
with their silver and lightning mixed, where the fishers struggle with
that immense sheet varnished in red-hot silver,--and at the end let not
the "Pilot's Pretty Daughter" of William Allingham's be forgotten:--
"Were it my lot--there peeped a wish--
To hand a pilot's oar and sail,
Or haul the dripping moonlit mesh
Spangled with herring-scale:
By dying stars how sweet 'twould be,
And dawn-blow freshening the sea,
With weary, cheery pull to shore
To gain my cottage-home once more,
And meet, before I reached the door,
My pretty pilot's daughter!"
But it is a fine fashion of this noble world never to acknowledge itself
too well pleased.
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