Mr. Brown’s reputation rests upon six romances:  “Wieland,” “Ormond,” “Arthur Mervyn,” “Edgar Huntly,” “Clara Howard,” and “Jane Talbot.”  The first five were published in the interval between the spring of 1798 and the summer of 1801, in which he completed his thirtieth year.  “Jane Talbot” appeared somewhat later.  In scenery and character, these romances are entirely unreal.  There is in them an affectation of psychological purpose which is not very well sustained, and a somewhat clumsy introduction of supernatural machinery.  Yet they have a power of engaging the attention in the rapid succession of startling and uncanny incidents and in adventures in which the horrible is sometimes dangerously near the ludicrous.  Brown had not a particle of humor.  Of literary art there is little, of invention considerable; and while the style is to a certain extent unformed and immature, it is neither feeble nor obscure, and admirably serves the author’s purpose of creating what the children call a “crawly” impression.  There is undeniable power in many of his scenes, notably in the descriptions of the yellow fever in Philadelphia, found in the romance of “Arthur Mervyn.”  There is, however, over all of them a false and pallid light; his characters are seen in a spectral atmosphere.  If a romance is to be judged, not by literary rules, but by its power of making an impression upon the mind, such power as a ghastly story has, told by the chimney-corner on a tempestuous night, then Mr. Brown’s romances cannot be dismissed without a certain recognition.  But they never represented anything distinctively American, and their influence upon American literature is scarcely discernible.

Subsequently Mr. Brown became interested in political subjects, and wrote upon them with vigor and sagacity.  He was the editor of two short-lived literary periodicals which were nevertheless useful in their day:  “The Monthly Magazine and American Review,” begun in New York in the spring of 1798, and ending in the autumn of 1800; and “The Literary Magazine and American Register,” which was established in Philadelphia in 1803—­It was for this periodical that Mr. Brown, who visited Irving in that year, sought in vain to enlist the service of the latter, who, then a youth of nineteen, had a little reputation as the author of some humorous essays in the “Morning Chronicle” newspaper.

Charles Brockden Brown died, the victim of a lingering consumption, in 1810, at the age of thirty-nine.  In pausing for a moment upon his incomplete and promising career, we should not forget to recall the strong impression he made upon his contemporaries as a man of genius, the testimony to the charm of his conversation and the goodness of his heart, nor the pioneer service he rendered to letters before the provincial fetters were at all loosened.