Originally published in Howitt's Journal (William Lovett) vol.1 #15 (10 Apr 1847).
Azeth the Egyptian. 3 vols. London: T.C. Newby.
Let all who have leisure, all who have any love for the marvellous, and the imaginative, and at the same time for the profound, read Azeth the Egyptian, for it is an extraordinary book. It will be read with great interest by those who require something more in a novel than the struggles, fashions, follies and crimes of the present day. That, however, which pleases us most is the earnest spirit which pervades it; it has not been written to fill up idle moments, but is a work of deep thought, study and research; the author's best has been done in it; and it never once loses sight of its purpose, that of establishing the supremacy of the true and the beautiful over falsehood, in all its multiplied shapes and disguises.
To those who hold by the prevalent, and, we grieve to say, too often well merited, belief that women are little better than a superior kind of butterfly, which flits from flower to flower, only sipping honey and basking in sunshine, we beg to state that Azeth, with all its old-world learning and bold philosophy, is the work of a young and lovely woman. Faults there are, no doubt, in the work, but they are not faults that belong exclusively to a female writer, they are the promise of future excellence, as redundant growth in the tree shews the strength that is in it. The faults of Azeth are those of inexperience; the author hardly knew how to deal with the superabundant material which was supplied by a rich imagination and great learning. The work also is much too long, the language sometimes inflated, and the imagery profuse and gorgeous almost to weariness; but time and experience will remedy all this.
We will not attempt in our small space any analysis of the story, but simply say that the aim of the work is to show the strivings of a pure, beautiful, and ardent spirit after truth, in which it is opposed by the sensual delusions, cold reasoning, and crafty tyranny of the corrupt priesthood of the time; and this gives occasion to much beautiful and noble argument on the universal subject of truth and religion. The work however is not made up of argument, there is plenty of love and war in it, and mysteries and initiations exciting and terrific enough to please any one; there are dancing girls, light airy creatures drawn with inimitable grace and fascination, and conjurers and magicians of Egypt, of whom Moses heard something in his day, and dwarfs, and druids, and Ishmaelites, so that the excitement-loving reader need not fear that the ponderous machinery of the work lacks agents to keep it moving.
In conclusion we must add that we shall look with great interest for any future work from the pen of the author of Azeth, and we are glad to hear that she is advancing a few steps nearer to the present time in a Greek novel, on which she is now employed.
