Adventures of the Young Man

THOUGH THE novels of Brockden Brown were never widely popular, they held the attention of a surprising number of Brown's juniors and betters, and because they did, it is not possible to remain content with the usual evaluation of Brown's achievement. Shelley's extravagant admiration, recorded in Peacock's memoir, is the notorious instance, but even the Edinburgh Review looked back on Brown, two decades after his death, as ''a man of genius, one of the half-dozen American writers worthy of commendation not merely as transatlantic curiosities but in their own right.' If Brown were only a purveyor of the conventions of Gothic romance, as he has customarily been represented, such a verdict would be hard to understand; for by the third of the nineteenth century, the period of his greatest vogue, these conventions had become objects of parody and ridicule. It would be foolish to claim too much for his novels-the technique is crude, the style cumbersome, the execution often careless and erratic. Allowances must be made, and it is understandable that as much attention has been paid to the circumstances of Brown's career as possibly our first professional man of letters as to the quality and scope of his work in fiction. But if he is to be kept in view, for whatever purpose, it is the second matter which should concern us. In a narrow compass one step at a time. By the end of this essay the

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