One of the Baron's "Merry Men All" has been reading and enjoying Mr.
BARRY PAIN's _Stories and Interludes_. The book has a wondrously weird
and heavily-lined picture in front, which is just a little too like
a "Prophetic Hieroglyphic" in _Zadkiel's Almanack_. An emaciated and
broken-winged devil is apparently carrying an engine-hose through a
churchyard, whilst a bat flits against a curious sky, which looks like
a young grainer's first attempt at imitating "birds'-eye maple." Upon
a second glance it seems possible that the "hose" is a snake, the tail
of which the devil is gnawing. The gruesome design illustrates a yet
more gruesome Interlude, entitled, "_The Bat and the Devil._" But it
gives no fair idea of the contents of the volume, some of which are
charming.
Read _White Nights_, stories within a story, told by a tragical
"Fool," of the breed of HUGO's _Rigoletto_, and POE's _Hopfrog_--with
a difference. They are told with force and grace, and with unstrained,
but moving pathos. Read "The Dog That Got Found," a brief sketch
indeed, but abundantly suggestive. Poor _Fido_--the "dog that got to
be utterly sick of conventionality," and came to such bitter grief in
his search for "life poignant and intense!" He might read a lesson
to many a two-legged prig, were the bipedal nincompoop capable of
learning it.
_The Glass of Supreme Moments_ is, perhaps, needlessly enigmatical,
and _Rural Simplicity_, _Concealed Art_, and _Two Poets_, strike one
as superfluously "unpleasant." Mr. PAIN seems slightly touched with
the current literary fad for making bricks with the smallest possible
quantity of straw. One halfpennyworth of the bread of incident to
an intolerable deal of the sack of strained style and pessimist
commentary, make poorish imaginative pabulum, though there seems an
increasing appetite for it amongst those who, unlike _Lucas Morne_ in
_The Glass of Supreme Moments_, plume themselves upon possession of
"the finer perceptions." _The Magic Morning_ is a "scrap" elaborately
sauced and garnished; the fleeting flavour may possess a certain
sub-acid piquancy, but such small dishes of broken meats are hardly
nourishing or wholesome.
Mr. PAIN has a delicate fancy and a graceful style, a bitter-sweet
humour, and a plentiful endowment of "the finer perceptions." He
has done some good work here, and will do better--when he finds his
subject, and loses his affectations. Read _White Nights_, again says
the Baron's "retainer."
BARON DE BOOK-WORMS & Co.
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COMING BARONETCY TO BE MUSICALLY NOTED.--Song for a "Lullaby" or
a "Good Knight" from _Don Giovanni_, and dedicated by nobody's
permission to Sir ARTHUR SEYMOUR SULLIVAN, would be "_Barty! Barty!_"
Will Sir EDWARD SOLOMON be in it? Probably this is "another night."
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