My Baronite, constitutionally credulous, on reading the earlier works
of JOHN OLIVER HOBBES, accepted the masculinity of the author as put
forward on the title page. On reading _The Gods, Some Mortals, and
Lord Wickenham_ (HENRY & CO.), he begins to doubt. No man, not the
weakest-minded amongst us, habitually uses italics in writing a book.
Moreover, none but a woman could draw such a creature as _Mrs. Anne
Warre_. The more generous masculine nature could not imagine anything
so unrelievedly undesirable. Doubtless she is made so bad the more
strikingly to compare with _Allegra_, "whose charm was the charm of
springtime and love, all the kind promises of the sunshine, the life,
the tenderness, the warmth, the graciousness of nature." The book, the
most ambitious, and, in point of length, the most important, that has
come from the pen of JOHN OLIVER HOBBES, is marked by her gift of
keen observation, that sees everything and sees through most people.
Dialogue and narrative sparkle with felicitous turns, bubble over with
epigram. There are boundless possibilities in JOHN OLIVER HOBBES;
but she should turn her face more persistently to the sunlight. _Dr.
Warre_ and _Allegra_ are so good and so pleasant, that the average
reader would like a little more of them, and a little less of the
almost impossible _Mrs. Warre_.
The proper study of mankind is man, and there could not be an apter
tutor than Mr. SMALLEY. His _Studies of Men_ (MACMILLAN), have, as
he tells us in a preface, appeared for the most part in the _New York
Tribune_. Everyone conversant with newspaper work will know that for
many years Mr. SMALLEY'S Letter from London to what, take it all in
all, is the principal, certainly the weightiest, journal in the United
States, has been its most prominent feature. A selection of these
contributions have, happily, been rescued from the files of the
newspaper, and are here presented. The Studies cover a wide range, but
the subjects are all, in diverse fashion, interesting. One is struck
with the extreme fairness of judgment displayed in dealing with
men who stand so far apart as, for example, Mr. ARTHUR BALFOUR, Mr.
PARNELL, Mr. SPURGEON, TENNYSON, Lord ROSEBERY, Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT,
Mr. FROUDE, Mr. JOHN WALTER, and Lord RANDOLPH CHURCHILL. During his
long residence in England Mr. SMALLEY has known these and others,
personally and in their public aspect. He has stored a picture gallery
in which posterity may see them as they lived, nothing extenuated nor
anything set down in malice. By way of redressing afresh the balance
between the Old World and the New, Mr. SMALLEY has turned his back on
London, and, having all these years written about Europeans, for the
edification of Transatlantic readers, is about to tell Europe, in
the columns of the _Times_, something of the undercurrent of public
affairs in the United States. He will find in himself a most damaging
rival.