_The Works of Alexander Pope._ New Edition, including several hundred
Unpublished Letters and other new Material, collected in part by the
late Right Honourable JOHN WILSON CROKER. With Introduction and Notes by
Rev. WHITWELL ELWIN. Vols. 1, 2, and 6. Murray. 1871.
Two things are evident on the most cursory inspection of Mr. Elwin's
work; first, that he has spared no pains in probing every corner of a
most complicated story; secondly, that he finds a pleasure in making the
case against Pope look as black as it possibly can be made. In a long
and minute investigation of the circumstances attending the publication
of the successive volumes of Pope's letters, he exposes the petty
trickery and vanity of the poet. We are ashamed of Pope as we read this
merciless exposure. But we are somewhat relieved when we recollect that
after all these frauds and concealments there was nothing to gain by it.
Like the magpie hiding a silver spoon, Pope took nothing by his trickery
but the pleasure of deceiving. He could not help doing as he did.
Whether from his Catholic education, or from whatever cause, he had
contracted a dishonest habit of mind, which came out in all his
dealings. But Mr. Elwin gets so heated with the chase after Pope's
stratagems, that he discovers them even where they do not exist. When he
sets up the theory that the 'Essay on Man' was a treatise of infidelity
palmed off on the public under the disguise of a vindication of
optimism, he overshoots the mark.
So far three volumes of the edition are before us--two of the poems, and
one of the correspondence. We hope in some early number to devote an
article to an examination of Mr. Elwin's editorial work.
_Napoleon Fallen._ A Lyrical Drama. By ROBERT BUCHANAN. Strahan and Co.
Mr. Buchanan is a brilliant _improvisatore_, and could doubtless produce
dramas and epics to order on any subject to which the revolutionary mind
is akin. We do not doubt the genuineness of his lyrical passion; it is
white-hot and screaming, but it seems as if it were easy to kindle, not
quite rational in its foundation, and certainly not classical in its
expression. As a rhymed pamphlet, special-pleading a cause, and echoing
the cries of the hour, 'Napoleon Fallen' is unquestionably powerful; as
a dramatic representation of events in the shape in which they will
descend to history, it is too violent to be true. It was a happy device
to incorporate the Athenian chorus with the modern drama; the expedient
provided expression for the eager feelings with which the world
witnessed the stupendous struggle. But to import into the statuesque
forms of poetry the frantic passion and inarticulate rage of the
vanquished, in their naked amorphous violence, removes the poem out of
the sphere of art. If the representation of a thing is meant to be
permanent, the thing itself must be not only real, but also permanent
in its nature. Lessing laid down this canon, and one would have thought
that it was now established. But if 'Napoleon Fallen' is not perfect as
a poem, there is very much fine poetry in it. The lyrical fire which an
age in travail with revolutions produces is perhaps not rare in our
days; Mr. Buchanan unquestionably possesses it. He also possesses that
belief and faith without which no man has a right to sing at all--belief
in the divine end of human life, and faith in the future. With poetic
indefiniteness it is rather an aspiration than an articulated creed, but
he is at least no emasculated Pagan. His dramatic power is less obvious,
and perhaps it is only the dramatism of the lyrist--the mere modulation
of passion into a different key.
_King Arthur._ By EDWARD BULWER (Lord Lytton.) Tucker.
Lord Lytton's variety and pertinacity of effort must command the
admiration of even those who do not deem him great. Amongst those
churlish critics we fear we must be ranked. He is not _quite_ a poet,
yet we cannot help sympathizing with his firm resolve to place himself
among poets if the thing could be done by endeavour. In that way it
cannot be done. Marsyas shall never equal Apollo. Lord Lytton's place
among novelists is not at this juncture our affair; his place among
versifiers is high, as 'St. Stephen's' shows; but we can give him no
place among poets. His 'King Arthur,' which has now been some years
before the public, is a complete proof of this. Even Mr. Tennyson
himself has not made quite the best of the son of Uther Pendragon. We
prefer the old version of 1460--
'What sawe thou there?' than sayd the Kynge,
'Telle me now, yiff thou can:
'Sertes Syr,' he sayd, 'No thynge,
'But watres depe and waves wanne,'
to the neoteric Sir Bedivere's 'long ripple washing in the reeds.' We
strongly object to the misconception of the wondrously beautiful story
of Vivian. We cannot comprehend why nobody dare tell us how Launcelot of
the Lake killed Agrawayne. If these old myths deserve poetic treatment,
treat them fairly; it is absurd to modify them to suit the indelicate
delicacy of a modern society whose most refined journals are fond of
essays upon questionable topics. This, however, is a slight digression:
let us return to Lord Lytton. He has managed to transform the Arthurean
romance into melodrama. Gawine and his raven remind one of a burlesque
by Burnand or Byron. Indeed, the poem shows poverty of invention, and a
complete want of mastery over rhythm and rhyme and style. Here is a
hexastichon:--
Bright as the moon, when all the pomp of cloud
Reflects its lustre in a rosy ring,
The worthy centre of a glittering crowd
Of youth and beauty, shone the British King:
Above that group, o'erarched from tree to tree,
Thick garlands hung their odorous canopy.
'Pomp of cloud'--'reflects its lustre'--'worthy centre'--'odorous
canopy'; these are just the phrases that nobody would write who took the
trouble to think. And why in the world should poor King Arthur be
compared to the moon? He has been much misrepresented by many poets; he
was a semi-barbarous Welshman, whom our Somersetshire men drove into the
sea down by Tintagel: but he has had a _sacer vates_, and we do not see
why he should be subjected to inferior treatment. Is there anything in
the contemporary Arthurean verse that approaches Sir Ector's lament over
Sir Launcelot of the Lake--Achilles of the Arthurean _Iliad_?... 'Ah Sir
Launcelot, thou wert head of all Christian Knights.... And thou wert the
courteousest knight that ever bore shield. And thou wert the truest
friend to thy lover of a sinful man that ever loved woman. And thou wert
the kindest man that ever struck with sword. And thou wert the goodliest
person that ever came among press of knights. And thou wert the meekest
man and the greatest that ever ate in hall among ladies. And thou wert
the truest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in rest.' So
says the old poet. Can Lord Lytton or Mr. Alfred Tennyson approach him?
Can Homer beat him? The illustrations of this edition are scarcely
worthy of the poem.
_The Iliad of Homer._ Translated by J. G. CORDERY. Rivingtons.
Englishing Homer has of late been a general occupation with men of
letters, and we should be the last to object to it. We delight in Homer.
We rather dislike the effeminate treatment which some of his myths have
met at the hands of one or two eminent modern poets. We hold that there
is more in the sonorous swing of those demiurgic dactyls than the
contemporary writers of blank verse can quite comprehend. Erratic enough
are we to hold that there was one Homer, not many--that no _purpurei
panni_ of Peisistratus were interwoven with his cloth of gold--that he
was an isolated leader of thought. Certain also are we that his
influence is in these days much needed, and that his Greek ideas are of
great service to modern Englishmen; his strength and simplicity are
things we possess and admire; many an Achilles has led the forlorn hope
for England, and many an Odysseus has been a F.R.G.S. There is nothing
more remarkable in Homer than what we shall venture to call his
_Englishness_. Hence, from one point of view the late Earl of Derby
translated him well; for the Earl was an Englishman every inch, and, as
we have heretofore said in these pages, the Hector of the Tory Troy. But
as the Earl was not a poet, he could not exactly render as he ought to
be rendered the supreme poet of the pagan past. Lord Derby saw in him
the part which is visible to the English legislator and landowner. There
is a good deal more than this in Homer scarcely comprehensible by the
race whose motto is _sans changer_. There are unfathomable depths of
poetic philosophy in those two oceans of thought which we call the
'Iliad' and 'Odyssey.' The key-note is struck in [Greek: Dios d'
eteleieto boulê]: throughout Homer we find the will of the supreme
Divinity always manifested.
It is, we believe, this coincidence of English with Hellenic ideas which
causes so many men of different types to find pleasure in Homer. Think
of the chasm between Pope and the "sick vulture," or even between Lord
Derby and the poet Worsley. The theme is tempting, but space avails not;
we must say a word or two on Mr. Cordery's 'Iliad.' He seems, so far as
we have followed him, to know his Greek excellently well; but he
assuredly does not know the power and capacity of English blank verse.
The rhythmic weapon, the most difficult we know, is not within his power
to wield. Thus he commences the 'Iliad'--those lines which, as Lord
Macaulay would say, 'every schoolboy knows'--
'Sing, goddess, of Achilles, Peleus' son
The wrath that rose disastrous, and the cause
Of woes unnumbered to Achaia's host,' &c.
The first few lines suffice. Here is a writer who cannot wield the metre
he has chosen. This being so, we find it undesirable to enter farther
into any discussion of the merits of his version, and shall content
ourselves with giving conscientious praise to his loving and patient
attempt to do a great work which is beyond his height of attainment.
This is not contemptuous nor careless criticism. Not yet has Homer been
done into English. Will any future translator give us Homer's
unutterable music, Homer's unfathomable thought?
_Ierne._ A Tale. By W. STEUART TRENCH. 2 vols. Longmans, Green, and Co.
If Mr. Trench's 'Realities of Irish Life' was something more than a
history, 'Ierne' is something more than a romance. It is full of vivid
pictures of Irish life, and is inlaid with historical information,
political disquisitions, and didactic comment. We are not sure which
presents the truer portraiture, the history or the romance, probably the
latter. It appears, in spite of the extravagance and impossibility of
its incidents, to reproduce with the fidelity which long personal
familiarity enables, various aspects of Western Irish life, its fine
culture, enthusiastic genius, and heroic patriotism in the higher
classes; its wild passions, its half-savage instincts, and its no less
noble patriotism in the lower. The representation is not a very hopeful
one; at least, whatever hope there is in it must be found in the gross
inconsistencies of thought, and in the unaccountable impulses of feeling
which made Ireland such an enigma to Lord Killarney; the blind,
deep-rooted infatuation about the ownership of land, and the notion that
all improvements by Saxon possessors are inimical to its reversion, so
that the better the landlord, the worse the feeling of antagonism
excited, is profoundly perplexing. Mr. Trench has so thorough a
knowledge of Irish feeling that we must accept this representation as
true. Even the excellencies of a Saxon landlord, and his solicitude for
the improvement of his estate and for the comfort of his peasantry, are
specific reasons why he should be shot. Mr. Trench writes in full
sympathy with the people in their sense of wrong. Few nations have been
so oppressed and peeled, and no generous or even just Englishman will
deny that, however unreasonable and fanatical Irish treason is now, when
for nearly a century everything that could be done to redress the
tyranny of the past has been done, it has traditional justification
which almost exalts it to patriotism; and Mr. Trench feels the
difficulty of so adjusting his sympathy as that while he justifies the
national resentment of the past, he may condemn the continued treason of
the present. Of course he sees no possibility in the dreams of
repealers, and wishes every wise friend of Ireland would denounce repeal
as the worst thing that could befall her. He can only, with ourselves,
hope that the measures of redress of the last two Parliaments which
leave Ireland almost literally without a grievance, will gradually
discredit political agitation, and engender loyalty. He does, indeed,
half suggest that a royal residence in Ireland, occasional visits from
the Queen, or the Prince of Wales, would, as an appeal to Irish
sentiment, be more potent than even the disestablishment of the Irish
Church, or the enactment of the Land Bill. If so, it is a pity the
experiment is not tried. As a romance, Mr. Trench's book is scarcely
worthy of criticism. Ierne's personation of the ghost and her marvellous
movements and achievements generally are simply preposterous. We
tolerate the romance for the sake of the pictures of Irish life
interwoven with it. Inveterate novel-readers will get through this,
others will skip the tale, but even then the book will, by its
information concerning national feelings and prejudices, and its
delineation of various scenes of national life, faction fights, midnight
drills, meetings of conspirators, and wakes, and especially by its racy
delineation of national humour, and its careful description of noble
scenery, amply repay persual.
_Véra_. By the Author of 'The Hôtel au Petit St. Jean.' Smith, Elder,
and Co.
The Charm of 'Véra' is twofold; first, it introduces us to the interior
of Russian life, and excites our interest by the delineation of modes of
thought, feeling, and life, very different from our own. Next, it is
written with great literary skill; the author's first work, which
delineated Provençal life, will have prepared its readers for excellent
workmanship in this. It is a story of character rather than of incident.
Véra is a Russian Princess, affianced in marriage to Count Alexis
Yotoff, her cousin, but the contemplated marriage is one of convenience
rather than of affection, and when Alexis falls at Inkermann, he is wept
with tenderness but not with passion. Colonel St. John, the nephew and
heir of Lord Kendal, who lies wounded on the field of Inkermann, is
assailed by some Russian stragglers, Alexis interposes to save him, and
accidentally falls a victim to St. John's pistol, which he is in the act
of discharging. He receives from the dying Alexis some souvenirs which
he engages to convey to Véra and his family. His wounds affect his
memory, and years elapse without his being able to redeem his pledge,
and recall the names of either Alexis or his friends. In the meanwhile
he becomes acquainted with Véra, and, although twenty years her senior,
they are mutually in love. Their love, however, is sadly marred by cross
purposes. At length St. John discovers, under critical circumstances,
that Véra was the intended recipient of the souvenirs, and that his was
the hand that deprived her of her lover. For awhile the discovery is
fatal, but a fortunate railway accident affords an opportunity for
explanation, and all comes right at last. The artistic excellence of the
work is in its delineations, and the undertone of thoughtful sentiment,
if not philosophy, that runs through it. Its text is the inevitableness
of destiny; and the way in which the story illustrates this is as
original as it is clever. It is a very charming novel, one of the very
few which we wish longer.
_Episodes in an Obscure Life._ Three vols. Strahan and Co.
This is one of the few books that leave the critic no alternative but
simply to heap together words of eulogy. Its least and lowest merit is
its literary workmanship, and yet we scarcely know where we could look
for more vivid pictures of accurate observation, of chaste simplicity,
and unpretentious power. The large-hearted geniality, manly piety, and
unwearied benevolence of the anonymous writer inform his eye and guide
his hand, throwing gleams of radiance, aspects of humour, and visions of
hope over the sad conditions of squalid misery which he describes,
without a particle of Dickens's falsetto. He exhibits the noble
kindly-heartedness and heroic self-denial that are often to be found in
combination with rough exteriors and chronic misery. 'Little Creases,'
'Mr. Jones,' 'the Matron of the Refuge,' 'Emily, the crossing-sweeper,'
'Bessie,' 'Sam and his wife,' 'Peter and his wife,' 'Blind Stevens and
his wife,' and half a score others, are illustrations not only of the
kindly and often heroic human nature that there is among the poorest,
but of the benevolent patient optimism in the writer that sees and
exhibits it. It is long since 'Annals of the Poor' were recorded with so
much genial sympathy and unconscious art.
The conditions of life described in these sketches are a humiliation and
a sorrow. Never before have the underlying evils and miseries of our
gilded civilization been so vividly portrayed. Legislators and
philanthropists have a Herculean task before them in the amelioration of
the physical and moral evils of such districts as the East of
London--the overcrowding, the adulterated food, the festering disease,
the moral corruption, the extreme penury, the lawless vice, the wretched
ignorance, the impassable gulfs, not one but many, between the rich and
poor. East-end ministers of religion know them, ragged-school teachers
and City missionaries know them, few else have any conception of them.
Little do travellers who arrive at the terminus of the Great Eastern
Railway know that within a stone's throw of the platform scenes such as
are here described are any day to be witnessed. The good and the evil
both--the good in spite of evil that is simply appalling--conditions of
poverty, lawlessness, vice, and suffering are nowhere in the wide world
to be surpassed. Legislation may do something to remedy this state of
things; commercial prosperity may do something; but it is, we fear,
chiefly the result of an indolence and vice that neither can touch. In
every village there are drunken, idle vagabonds; in great cities this
element is fearfully multiplied and intensified, and it brings misery
upon hundreds who are not of it.
All honour, then, to brave, patient, Christ-like men like the author of
this work, who are content to live their obscure life, if they may but
do something to alleviate it. Theirs is the only influence that can
regenerate vice, or in any way effectually deal with it. We know
something of the district which the writer describes, and happily we can
testify to scores of young men and women of the upper classes who visit
it, and cheerfully give evenings and Sundays to teach ragged children,
instruct their mothers, and, so far as it is wise, afford them
substantial help. No one can doubt that a clergyman, gifted as is the
author of this work, has chosen his lot, abjured the ease and elegance
of refined life which might have been his, that after the example of his
Master he may seek and save the lost. How simply, sincerely, and wisely,
as well as with what unconscious self-sacrifice, he does it, this noble
book will show. With characteristic self-abnegation the author does not
give his name. Every reader will heartily say, 'God bless him;' and if
our recommendation could avail it should carry his book into every rich
man's house and every comfortable home in the land.
_Earl's Dene._ By R. E. FRANCILLON. In Three vols. Edinburgh: W.
Blackwood and Sons.
'Earl's Dene' has too obviously been written for the critics to satisfy
a critic. The course of the narrative is interrupted by appeals _ad
clerum_, which disturb the sense of illusion without convincing the
judgment. The tone of the book is apologetic and explanatory, as if the
author were under terror of the critic's lash, and were conscious that
the movement of the story would seem so capricious as to require
justification. This is a mistake in art, which seldom carries any
compensation with it. The ordinary novel-reader is the most unexacting
of human beings, and has unlimited capacity of digesting
improbabilities; while the cultivated and analytic reader will be too
conscious of the complexity of motives to be scared by superficial
inconsistencies in the delineation of character. Thackeray was guilty of
frequent 'asides,' but they were only outbreaks of cynicism or of
pathos; incessant eruptions of psychology are less pleasing, if not more
inartistic. But in all respects, this very defect included, 'Earl's
Dene' is far above the level of common-place fiction. Though not
strikingly original, it is evidently a transcription of life at first
hand, and as seen through the medium of a refined and delicate
intellect. The atmosphere of the book, though now and again disturbed
by storms, is pure rather than bracing, and is fragrant with the aroma
of refined reflection, which must be the outcome of long and intense
experience. Decidedly feminine, we should say; overflowing with
observations on the sex that look like self-revelations, and with
sketches of the male animal which are inexpressibly grotesque when they
are not weak. If anyone wants to see how Bohemia and its denizens
picture themselves in an alien mind, he should study the portrait of
Dick Barton, a cross between Caliban and Porson, an absurd and utterly
impossible monster. But the characters are for the most part carefully
drawn, by slight repeated touches, however, rather than by bold and
luminous strokes. The dialogue sparkles with French _esprit_. There is
obvious shrinking from common-place, as when the author refuses to
describe first love; and, lastly, the novel is a novel with a purpose.
It shows to men the ways of that great god 'Circumstance,' who seems a
very Moloch, and winds up the tragedy by a general holocaust of his
victims.
_My Little Lady._ Hurst and Blackett.
This charming novel, evidently by a female hand, is written with much
grace and variety. The idea on which it is based has the advantage of
perfect novelty. The 'little lady' is the child of an inveterate
aristocratic gambler called Linders, who lives at Spa and Baden and
other places of the same class, and who has a marvellous capacity for
'breaking the bank.' Whether he has a 'Martingale' we are not told, and
indeed the authoress occasionally shows that she is quite properly
unfamiliar with _rouge et noir_ and _roulette_. But the conception is
that this fellow, though on the whole a scoundrel, loves his little
daughter Madelon, and that she, following him everywhere, becomes
acquainted with the games he plays, and innocently regards gaming as
quite a proper mode of making money. The complications herefrom arising
are manifold, and are told felicitously: but the writer, who is probably
a beginner, is apt to spin out her description and narrative to a rather
wearisome length. Rapidity of narration is becoming one of the rarest
qualities of modern authorship. That authors are paid for quantity
instead of quality sufficiently accounts for this: and the great
novel-manufacturers of the day, who turn out a volume a month and find
readers for them, must, we suppose, be tolerated: but we cannot help
regretting this unsatisfactory prolixity when, as in the present case,
there is a pretty and piquant and original story to be told. However, it
will be largely read, since it is high above the average of tales of the
same order. Of the characters, the best drawn is the great gambler
himself; hardly a possible personage, we suspect, but if possible
curiously interesting. Madelon in her utter simplicity is very lovely;
and she is quite conceivable, since there is no reason why a young girl
should see any harm in gambling. Nine people out of ten would be puzzled
to say on the instant why gambling is wrong: and the state of society
shows that very 'honourable men' (as Mark Antony hath it) can see no
harm in the doings at Tattersall's and the Victoria Club. So that a
little girl whose father was an astute patrician gambler, should
innocently take to _rouge et noir_, is quite intelligible--and a very
pretty story is based upon it, with some strongly dramatic scenes
therein. By the way, the names of flowers should be properly spelt,
especially by lady writers: Westeria (vol. ii. p. 185) ought to be
Wistaria, as it was named after Caspar Wistar, professor of anatomy in
the University of Pennsylvania.
_Harold Erle._ By the Author of "The Story of a Life."
The author of this poem reveals his high and delicate culture, and not
unfrequently a true poetic grace. There are lines, passages, and entire
scenes, which suggest the blank verse of Wordsworth. We are not reminded
of the introspection and subjective might by which Wordsworth brings
under the microscope of his 'inward eye' the beauties of nature and the
mysteries of life, but of his bald simplicity, of his religious use of
common-place, as well as of his partial inability to appreciate the
difficulty which the great majority of the human race experience in
perceiving a poetic side of 'common things.' 'Harold Erle' is a
singularly painful theme, and one which will not readily lend itself to
the Muses. The dangers incident to the marriage of blood relations, and
the Nemesis which hereditary insanity imposes on some who enter into the
lists of love, are not refreshing matters for contemplation. Blighted
affections, the madhouse, and the grave, certainly provide material for
high imaginative treatment, but when these strong colours are used
chiefly with a view of entrapping us into a philosophic generalization
of a universal law of marriage, we are disposed to feel that poetry
itself has here degenerated into social philosophy. 'Harold Erle' is a
powerful story, but the moral and the motive of it seem insufficient,
and the _dénouement_ is decidedly prosaic. The _l'envoie_ of the poem
seems to be: 'Young people, do not marry your first cousins; should your
parents have been so foolish as to have done this, then, by all the nine
Muses, do not marry at all.'
The career of Harold Erle is well told. Certain scenes are portrayed
with pictorial power. There are tender touches of consummate grace, and
emotions, events, and sacrifices are narrated which show how fertile
this unwelcome theme has become in the hand of an accomplished writer.
_Martha._ By WILLIAM GILBERT, Author of 'Lucrezia Borgia,' &c. Hurst and
Blackett. 1871.
In the conduct of this story Mr. Gilbert has not stinted his readers in
the matter of time. We are furnished with the family history and
domestic details of four, if not five, successive generations. Near the
commencement of the story we are introduced to a wealthy young
spendthrift, who is startled by losses on the turf into propriety,
thrift, and marriage. The closing pages of the novel bring us
acquainted with the great-grandchildren of this worthy. An extraordinary
number of prosy and uninteresting characters--many of them mere
dummies--try the patience of the reader. With aggravating minuteness
circumstances which have no bearing on the story are laboriously
detailed. About a dozen different illnesses or accidents are portrayed
at such length as to suggest the notion that a hospital clerk had
nefariously introduced into the author's manuscript some pages from his
medical note-book. The oracular twaddle of the medical adviser who
figures throughout the story is redeemed from common-place only by the
presentation of a rather interesting psychological problem which, we
presume, may be stated thus: Is it possible on purely physical, or at
least subjective, grounds to account for the belief entertained by an
otherwise rational person that the phantoms of her departed relatives
continually visited her in the great crises of a chequered life? We
presume that Mr. Gilbert intends to suggest a strong affirmative. The
subject of these hallucinations, called Martha Thornburg, is the only
character of the story who possesses the minutest tittle of interest.
She is the impersonation of unselfish consecration of life to the good
of others, and on two separate occasions in her long life, at
considerable intervals from each other, she is represented as enduring
the very extremity of human suffering. She becomes a lightning-conductor
of all the accumulated misfortune with which the devil of the piece has
charged the thunder-cloud that spends its fury on this ill-fated family.
There are two villains, at least, among the _dramatis personæ_ so
utterly unredeemed by a single ray of goodness as to despoil them of all
human interest. The one apparently belongs to the genus rattlesnake, the
other to the genus hyæna. Bigamy, fraudulent bankruptcy, forgery,
destitution of natural affection, detestable cowardice, attempted
fratricide and murder, are a few of the peccadilloes of the more refined
devil, who at last dies in his bed; the other, we are thankful to say,
hangs himself. The vigorous, prosperous, generous brother of 'Martha,'
as well as many other characters, are very faintly sketched, and the
principal, if not the sole, interest of the story consists in the
misguided goodness of 'Martha,' who covers herself with the suspicion of
complicity with the miscreant who had been throughout the curse of her
family. However, the mystery is cumbrous in the extreme, and the
solution of it by no means artistic. We certainly cannot congratulate
Mr. Gilbert on a successful use of his undoubted powers; but we are glad
to know that, after all their vicissitudes, Martha Thornbury, her
brother, his nephew, and the wife and family of the latter are all doing
well. Their furniture is excellent, their wardrobe complete, their
bracelets, ornaments, and toys abundant; and we earnestly trust that
should any illness or accident befall them, Dr. Wilson will be at hand,
not only with skilful treatment, but with ample explanations of all the
pathological phenomena.
_Dorothy Fox._ By LOUISA PARR. Strahan and Co.
It is vain to pooh-pooh love stories, so long as the passion itself
rules the world so much as it does; the thing that provokes the protest
of sensible people is, that love stories are-often so ineffably foolish,
as indeed are people who are in love. A thoroughly good love story,
high-minded, true-hearted, and sensible, is about as good a service as a
novelist can render to her generation. To inculcate noble principles,
and inspire noble feelings in the pursuit of the passion upon which the
chief social happiness of the world depends, is a work worthy of the
highest genius, and demanding the gratitude of all who wish well to
mankind. 'Dorothy Fox' is a love story pure and simple. Dorothy is the
daughter of a Quaker of the strictest sort, a wealthy hosier, destined
to marry Josiah Crewdson, also a well-to-do tradesman; but, as even the
primmest and most dutiful Quakeresses will do, she takes it into her
pretty head or heart to fall in love with Captain Charles Verschoyle, a
poor cadet of a good family, whose mother, Lady Laura, is bent upon both
him and his sister making good matches. Charles reciprocates Dorothy's
love, and will not marry Miss Bingham's fifty thousand pounds. While
Audrey, the sister of Charles, instead of marrying as she ought old Mr.
Ford, the millionaire _parvenu_, perversely falls in love against her
own intention with Mr. Dynecourt, a poor barrister of ancient lineage.
How Lady Laura schemed, and old Mr. Fox was scandalized; how wise and
generous old Mr. Ford was, and how noble Josiah Crewdson--his
disagreeable sisters notwithstanding--how charming Patience Fox was, and
Grace, and John Hanbury, and how beautiful and refined Quaker-life may
be, and often is, the authoress has told very charmingly. The characters
of Charles and Audrey, with their glaze of worldly selfishness, which
melts away like hoar frost under the heat of pure love, leaving an
innate and uncorrupted nobleness, are very cleverly delineated; so is
Harry Egerton, the rough old squire, with his kind, manly heart.
The story is a very pleasant and a very wholesome one. We trust that
Miss Parr will again present to us pictures of Quaker interiors, with
which she is so well acquainted. In them her strength lies.
_On the Eve: A Tale by Ivan S. Tourguéneff._ Translated from the Russian
by C. E. TURNER, English Lecturer in the University of St. Petersburg.
Hodder and Stoughton.
Rather more than a couple of years ago (_British Quarterly_, Oct., 1869)
we directed the attention of English readers to the novels of
Tourguéneff, in an article in which a detailed account of 'On the Eve'
was given. We need not, therefore, do more than refer our readers to
what we then said about this very charming little story, which paints
Russian life from the interior with the hand not only of skill, but of
genius. Its social freedom surprises us, and its indications of easy
social vices startle us. Ellen, the heroine, is a very beautiful
creature. The translation reads smoothly and brightly. Mr. Turner seems
to have done his work well. We are glad to possess this work of a great
artist in an English dress.
_Marquis and Merchant._ By MORTIMER COLLINS. Three vols. Hurst and
Blackett.
Mr. Collins in this new novel has aimed to portray two of the great
social classes that constitute England, and the two that are, perhaps,
in more active rivalry, if not antagonism, than any other, and to show
that the prejudice is not chiefly with the higher. The Marquis of
Wraysbury, whose hereditary seat is at Ashbridge, is a favourable
representative of what we are proud to designate our noble aristocracy.
Wealthy, generous, liberal, frank, gentlemanly, he is the _beau ideal_
of his class. His son, Lord Waynflete, the hero of the story, is the
inheritor of his father's virtues, with a freedom from class
conventionalities which is his own, and which permits him, as quite a
thing of course, to marry a poor governess.
Mr. Mowbray, who buys an estate at Ashbridge and builds there a splendid
mansion overpowering in magnitude, luxury, and appendages of garden,
conservatory, &c., and which quite dwarfs the more modest belongings of
Ashbridge Manor, is a Manchester millionaire; also a favourable
representative of his class--keen, clever, generous, but with some
drawbacks of class prejudice and obstinacy, which Mr. Collins paints
with an evident gusto. He is the rival of the Marquis in spite of the
latter; and the story is made up not unpleasantly of the history of
their rivalries, with the issue thereof. Much of the subsidiary
delineation is very good. The interiors at Ashbridge Manor, at Mowbray
Mansion, at the Orphan Institute, at Mrs. Gutch's, and at delicious
Wyvern Grange, are cleverly sketched, in these well-selected contrasts.
The subordinate characters; that clever woman, Miss Pinnock, great in
Johnsonese; the Bohemian lawyer, Terrell; the learned, gentlemanly
recluse, Métivier, full of gipsy and all other lore; and a dozen others,
are also admirably delineated. The novel is deficient as a work of art,
but only a very clever and accomplished man could have written it. It is
somewhat Bohemian in itself, and has an unpleasant vinous
flavour--allusions, characterizations, or eulogies on wines occurring
perpetually, as if the chief good of man were to have a good wine-cellar
and to be a _connoisseur_ of good vintages. The book is, moreover, an
odd _mélange_ of all conceivable things; one chapter is devoted to a
criticism on Tennyson, another to a criticism on Dickens; verses
_apropos_ of everything and nothing abound. Mr. Collins has a marvellous
Ingoldsby facility for running off rhymes, and when prose fails him or
wearies him, he takes to verse. A diagram of a game of chess, an
algebraic equation, and no end of classical quotations, are kneaded like
currants into the dough of Mr. Collins's cookery. Not only has he been
at a feast of languages, and stolen the scraps, he has evidently carved
the dishes for himself. The story is, as we have said, not so well
constructed as it might be. It is not always in good taste; it rumbles
and rollicks along; but it is very clever and very amusing. It is less
melodramatic than Mr. Collins usually is, and is, we think, the best
book he has written.
_The Green-Eyed Monster._ By KAY SPEN. Smith, Elder, and Co.
The title of this little book indicates its character. Hugh Barrington
falls in love in a railway carriage with Adela Gwynne, a blue-eyed Welsh
girl, and marries her. She is of a preposterously jealous disposition,
and perversely interprets countless little incidents as justifying her
jealousy. The story details the working out of these feelings and their
disastrous issues, and the ability of the writer is shown in her
psychological knowledge and skill. It is in this point of view very
clever. Of course incidents occur with preternatural consentaneousness,
and people act and feel in a very infatuated way, setting common sense
at defiance, else how would novels get written? But Kay Spen has managed
her materials well, and has written an interesting story with a very
wholesome moral.
_Jasmine Leigh._ By C. C. FRASER-TYTLER. Strahan and Co.
This is a very dainty little story. It is written in an autobiographical
form, and narrates the history of a young girl blossoming into womanhood
and love, who is abducted by a rough and sordid wooer, whom,
nevertheless, she learns to pity, if not to love. It is written with a
delicate touch, and is full of graceful and refined feeling. If, as we
surmise, it is a first work, it is full of promise.
_Her Own Fault._ By Mrs. J. K. SPENDER. Hurst and Blackett.
Mrs. Spender writes with great care and with considerable strength. Her
story is well constructed, and the characters are marked by strong
individuality. The story is a stormy one. Sara, who is a very fine
creation, is 'a beautiful embodied storm.' Indeed, the defect of Mrs.
Spender is, that her strength is not sufficiently calm. Every character
is wrought up to the agony pitch: Sara, when she has accepted Rosswith
Maxwell--Bryan on the night when he learns his rejection--Lawrence Routh
in his suppressed intensity--Charley in her passionate sisterliness--all
are wrought up to powerful and exaggerated passion. Mrs. Spender might
say with the American young lady after dinner, 'I guess I've piled it
on.' The story, however, is vigorous and original, although it is not a
very pleasant one. Everybody is to be pitied. Poor Bryan is left with a
sentence of death recorded against him.