Born at Glasgow, 1789: died at Pisa, Italy, Dec. 7, 1842. A Scottish author, brother of Sir William Hamilton (1788–1856). He wrote “Cyril Thornton” (1827), “Annals of the Peninsular Campaign” (1829), “Men and Manners in America” (1833).
Personal
Mr. Hamilton exhibited a remarkable union of scholarship, high breeding, and amiability of disposition. To the habitual refinement of taste which an early mastery of the classics had produced, his military profession and intercourse with society had added the ease of the man of the world, while they had left unimpaired his warmth of feeling and kindliness of heart. Amidst the active services of the Peninsular and American campaigns, he preserved his literary tastes; and, when the close of the war restored him to his country, he seemed to feel that the peaceful leisure of a soldier’s life could not be more appropriately filled up than by the cultivation of literature. The characteristic of his mind was rather a happy union and balance of qualities than the possession of any one in excess; and the result was a peculiar composure and gracefulness, pervading equally his outward deportment and his habits of thought.
General
As for Tom Hamilton, the resources of his mind, the brilliancy of his wit, and the play of his fancy, are quite uncommon. “Cyril Thornton” is certainly a work of great ability, though by no means what I should have expected from him.
It [“Men and Manners in America”] is undoubtedly as we have said, in point of literary execution, one of the best that have yet appeared upon the United States. The style is not deficient in strength or spirit, and evinces at times a remarkable power of description, as in the passages on the Falls of Niagara and the river Mississippi. On the other hand, it is far from being uniformly so pure and correct as might be wished,—is often unpardonably coarse, and is pervaded throughout by an affected pertness and a silly air of pretension, which are offensive from the beginning, and finally become by repetition completely nauseous…. That a spirit of unjust depreciation is the one that predominates in his work, is—as we shall have occasion abundantly to show—very certain.
The only work of fiction which he has given to the public certainly indicates high powers both of pathetic and graphic delineation; but the qualities which first and most naturally attracted attention, were rather his excelling judgment of character, at once just and generous, his fine perception and command of wit and quiet humour, rarely, if ever, allowed to deviate into satire or sarcasm, and the refinement, taste, and precision with which he clothed his ideas, whether in writing or in conversation. From the boisterous or extravagant he seemed instinctively to recoil, both in society and in taste…. The “Annals of the Peninsular Campaign” had the merit of clear narration, united with much of the same felicity of style; but the size of the work excluded that full development and picturesque detail which were requisite to give individuality to its pictures. His last work was “Men and Manners in America,” of which two German and one French translations have already appeared; a work eminently characterized by a tone of gentlemanly feeling, sagacious observation, just views of national character and institutions, and their reciprocal influence, and by tolerant criticism; and which, so far from having been superseded by recent works of the same class and on the same subject, has only risen in public estimation by the comparison.
It was at Chiefswood that the greater part of “The Life and Manhood of Cyril Thornton” was written. It appeared in 1827, and was most favourably received. The sketches of college, military, and civic life are drawn with great vividness. The portraiture, in particular, of former Glasgow manners, is, whether overdrawn or not, one of the raciest bits of writing in the language.
He visited America, and wrote a lively ingenious work on the New World, entitled “Men and Manners in America,” 1833. Captain Hamilton was one of the many travellers who disliked the peculiar customs, the democratic government, and social habits of the Americans; and he spoke his mind freely, but apparently in a spirit of truth and candour.
Hamilton’s novel “Cyril Thornton” appeared in 1827. Apart from its considerable merits as a work of fiction, it remains a bright and valuable record of the writer’s times, from his early impressions on Scottish university life and Glasgow citizens—when as yet he could call Govan “a pretty and rural village”—on to his varied military experiences…. His “Men and Manners in America” appeared in 1833. Here his fund of humour and his genial satire—characteristics that struck Carlyle in his interviews with him in 1832–3—found scope, but his fun, if occasionally extravagant, was never unfair, nor were his criticisms directed by prejudice or charged with ill-nature. The book was popular, and in ten years had been translated once into French and twice into German.
No doubt the novel of “Cyril Thornton” has in time past owed much of its popularity to its varied action and frequently shifting scene, and if we are to judge it now on literary grounds we have no choice but to acknowledge that a great portion of its interest has perished. Still, there remain a few admirable passages, and in this particular instance the lines of cleavage between true and false are marked with peculiar distinctness. For the book may be described as fragments of autobiography embedded in a paste of romance. Now imagination was by no means Hamilton’s strong point; his fancy was neither very happy nor very abundant, and when he essays character-painting on an important scale—as in the case of old David Spreull, the conventional eccentric but beneficent uncle of the story, and his faithful servant Girzy, he is as deficient in anything like true insight as he is in lightness of touch. But though his fiction is of this heavy quality, he could present to admiration what he himself had seen and taken part in, and from time to time he has thought fit to do so, with excellent effect.
