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The most interesting book, one of the Baron's Retainers ("blythe and
gay,") has read this year is, _The Life of Laurence Oliphant_. If it
were not written by a reputable person, and published by so eminently
respectable a house as BLACKWOOD's, there would be difficulty about
accepting it as a true story of the life of a man whom some of us
knew, as lately living in London, wearing a frock coat, and even a
tall hat of cylindrical shape. Such a mingling of shrewd business
qualities and March madness as met in LAURENCE OLIPHANT is surely a
new thing. A man of gentle birth, of high culture, of wide experience,
of supreme ability, and, strangest of all, with a keen sense of
humour--that such an one should voluntarily step down from high social
position at the bidding of a vulgar, selfish, self-seeking, and,
according to some hints dropped here and there, grossly immoral man,
should, at beck of his fat forefinger, go forth to a strange land
to live amid sordid circumstances, and with uncongenial company, to
work as a common, farm-labourer, to peddle strawberries at a railway
station, passes belief. With respect to Mr. HARRIS, one feels inclined
to quote _Betsy Prig's_ remark touching one who may, peradventure,
have been a maternal relation. "I don't believe," said _Betsy_,
"there's no sich a person." But there was, and, stranger still,
there was a LAURENCE OLIPHANT to bend the knee to him. Not the least
striking thing in a book of rare value is the manner in which Mrs.
OLIPHANT has acquitted herself in a peculiarly difficult task. No man
would have had the restraining patience necessary to deal with the
HARRIS episodes as she has done.
The Assistant Reader has been refreshing himself with _Lapsus Calami_,
by J.K.S., published by MACMILLAN and BOWES. It is a booklet of light
verse, containing here and there some remarkably brilliant pieces
of satire and parody. The first of two parodies of ROBERT BROWNING
is unsurpassable for successful audacity. The last poem in the book
is "An Election Address," written for, but apparently not used by,
the present POSTMASTER-GENERAL, when he was Candidate for Cambridge
University, in 1882. He says of himself, after confessing to a dislike
for literature and science,--
"But I have fostered, guided, planned
Commercial enterprise; in me
Some ten or twelve directors, and
Six worthy chairmen you may see."
All the pieces are not so good as those cited--that would be too much
to expect--but "get it," say
BARON DE BOOK-WORMS & Co.
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