The Hand of the Arch-Sinner: Two Angrian Chronicles of Branwell Brontë, A Reader’s Edition ed. by Robert G. Collins (review)

158 LETTERS IN CANADA 1992 gaard's 'Hegelian anti-Hegelianism': that is, their rejection ofabstractions in favour of an ideal of life. These abstractions may be aesthetic or ethical. Blake's spectre, like Kierkegaard's, encompasses both: 'the spectre to be mastered is the selfhood of pure will or of pure reason - a totalizing willto -power threatening to negate all that Blake calls life.' 'Life' is a heavily used word here, since Clark begins with the assumption that it is the central term of Romanticism, and thus argues that, in one sense, Blake and Kierkegaard 'share the same ideal of life as do all the romantics.' However, their pursuit of this ideal took a different route from that of their contemporaries. Thus the account of their project leads to a reevaluation of the JRomantic ideal of life' - although the extent of this reevaluation is somewhat hard to determine in the absence of a definition of what the goal of 'life' meant to Romanticism in general (does it have to do with organicity? plenitude? or history, in Jerome McGann's sense?). There is a built-in problem of a sort here, in that 'life,' particularly when used repea tedly in phrases such as Jideal of life' and Jhigher truth of life,' tends to become a kind of abstraction itself, for all that the author strives to present it as the contrary to abstraction. Stilt Clark does an admirable job of defining 'life' as championed by Blake and Kierkegaard as emotional crisis, individuality, turbulence, actuality, situatedness, and - above all - choice. She also, at least implicitly, asks us to consider the significance of this ideal for Romanticism in general, referring us to 'the vitality at the heart of [the] romantic ideal of life, the vitality at the heart of romanticism itself.' While this remains a book primarily on Blake and secondarily on Kierkegaard, there is a strong revisionist undercurrent that, by defining the poetic-philosophical response of Blake and Kierkega ~rd to their own life experiences as well as to the grand philosophical systems of their time, tends toward a fresh reconceptualization of Romanticism . (ANGELA ESTERHAMl'v1ER) Robert G. Coilins, editor. TlIe Hand of the Arch-Sinner: Two Angrian Cllronicles of Brallwell Bronte, A Reader's Edition Clarendon Press. lvi, 243. $76.50 Robert G. Collins has produced a handsome readers edition of two works of Branwell Bronte's juvenilia, 'The Life of Field Marshal the Right Honourable Alexander Percy, Earl of Northangerland' and 'Real Life in Verdopolis.' Both chronicles, hitherto thought to be lost, focus on the Byronic character, Alexander Percy, known variously as Northangerland, Lord Elrington, and Rougue. In the first narrative, Northangerland's early life - especially his stormy relationship with his father and his first marriage - is recounted by his one-time tutOf, John Bud. In the second chronicle, an older Rougue seems principally to curse, to fight, to gamble, HUMANITIES 159 and to drink, although he also finds time to lead a successful attack on a prison, to deliver a powerful oration in Parliament, and to swindle a young nobleman out of a vast sum of money. The chronology of Northanger ]and's life accounts for the order in which Collins presents the tales. The reader who is more interested in the maturing of Branwell Bronte's style, however, may prefer to read the second one first, as the history of the older Rougue was written in 1833 when Branwell Bronte was sixteen, and the account of the younger man two years later. The younger Bronte revels in the physical constitution and prowess of his hero. Northanger]and frequently drinks himself into a violent frenzy followed by a physical collapse, but then, after a drink or two the next morning, seems little the worse for wear. He also fights ninety-one rounds with his rival Arthur Wellesley, the Marquis of Douro, with blows elaborately described: 'Arthur ... began round second by a cautious guard of his person and a toucher on Rougue's smeller which brought out a beautiful stream of claret.... Soon their eyes became black as midnight, their lips as red as coral, their cheeks like those of a milkmaid.' The older Branwell Bronte has obviously been reading...