“AFTER the valets, the master!” is Mr. Fechter’s rallying cry in the
picturesque romantic drama which attracts all London to the Lyceum
Theatre. After the worshippers and puffers of Mr. Daniel Dunglas Home,
the spirit medium, comes Mr. Daniel Dunglas Home himself, in one volume.
And we must, for the honour of Literature, plainly express our great
surprise and regret that he comes arm-in-arm with such good company as
Messrs. Longman and Company.
We have already summed up Mr. Home’s demands on the public capacity of
swallowing, as sounded through the war-denouncing trumpet of Mr. Howitt,
and it is not our intention to revive the strain as performed by Mr. Home
on his own melodious instrument. We notice, by the way, that in that
part of the Fantasia where the hand of the first Napoleon is supposed to
be reproduced, recognised, and kissed, at the Tuileries, Mr. Home subdues
the florid effects one might have expected after Mr. Howitt’s execution,
and brays in an extremely general manner. And yet we observe Mr. Home to
be in other things very reliant on Mr. Howitt, of whom he entertains as
gratifying an opinion as Mr. Howitt entertains of him: dwelling on his
“deep researches into this subject”, and of his “great work now ready for
the press”, and of his “eloquent and forcible” advocacy, and eke of his
“elaborate and almost exhaustive work”, which Mr. Home trusts will be
“extensively read”. But, indeed, it would seem to be the most reliable
characteristic of the Dear Spirits, though very capricious in other
particulars, that they always form their circles into what may be
described, in worldly terms, as A Mutual Admiration and Complimentation
Company (Limited).
Mr. Home’s book is entitled _Incidents in My Life_. We will extract a
dozen sample passages from it, as variations on and phrases of harmony
in, the general strain for the Trumpet, which we have promised not to
repeat.