CURRENT LITERATURE.
The New Quarterly Magazine, for July. (Ward, Lock, and Tyler.)— The most interesting article in this number is one on "Affonso Henriquez and the Rise of Portugal," by Oswald Crawford, Her Majesty's Consul at Oporto. It gives a vivid picture of the struggles through which Portugal emerged into independence, and of the barbaric characteristics of those distant times. None of the other papers in the magazine that we have read strike us as being of much value. The editor's estimate of De Quincey seems to us too extravagantly favourable to be critically valuable. The talents and qualities of De Quincey do not recommend him strongly to the taste of this generation, and he has always seemed to us to be more a master of witty and scholarly style than a thinker. The paper on "Bute the Premier" is irritatingly feeble and ill put together, and after raising our expectations by a talk about original documents never before used, tells us positively nothing that is new. There is much cleverness in some parts of Mr. Robert Buchanan's article on as The Modern Stage," but as a whole, we cannot profess to like it. Many remarks in this essay are not merely offensively bumptious, but also vulgar. Of the two stories which form part of the staple contents of the New Quarterly Magazine, that by Mrs. Lynn Linton is the most artistically formed and complete, but there are more elements of a powerful tale in the "Dark Cybel" of Mrs. Cashel Hoey. This lady has, however, spoiled her tale by laying down the lines of it on too large a scale. It is consequently not a complete tale, but only a three-volume novel reduced to the limits of one by the help of the ready scissors. In one respect, there is nothing for which we should be disposed to commend this magazine more than the fashion of its fiction. If it could only be the means of training writers of novels to write concisely, it would do a distinct service to literature. Other- wise, we must say that we still fail to see where its distinctive place or excellence can be. We must not close our notice without mentioning the graceful essay by Miss Power Cobbe. It describes the relative attractions and conditions of town life and country life in a very sweet and tender fashion.
Previous page
