CURRENT LITERATURE.
Fields of Fair Renown. By Joseph Hocking. (Ward, Lock, and Co.)—In one sense this is the most ambitious, in another it is the
least successful, of its author's works. He has never before tried such a feat in character-sketching as Merlin Rosevear ; on the other hand, he has never before crowded so many figures into his canvas. As a result, Fields of Fair Renown is satisfactory only up to a certain point,—tbe point where Merlin's moral declension begins. Rose. year is for a time a delightful hero. He is the son of a miner, and clerk to a mining company in Cornwall. He cherishes literary ambitions and sends contributions to numerous editors, only to have the majority of them rejected. But in spite of disappointments he goes to London, and, inspired by his love for Helen Glanville, a pure English girl whose life he saves in a mine, and who allows herself to get engaged to him although she is socially above him, forces his way into journalism and novel- writing. And then he falls. Because he finds that the writing of " sex "-novels full of " risky" situations pays, he goes in for it and succeeds but too well. He throws Helen Glanville overboard, and marries Mrs. Telford, a rich widow with a past and an un- satisfied heart. Finally, when he is a widower, he tries by a very shabby trick to secure Helen again. But she discards him for Vivian Gregory, who is not only an artist and an author but a gentleman, and who has been unconsciously Merlin's rival for a considerable time. All this is incredible in the case of a lad like Rosevear, who has certainly a sound conscience to start with. As we have said, Mr. Hocking has introduced too many characters into his story. We might easily have dispensed both with his " literary" characters and with Mrs. Blindly and her " slumming " friends. Helen Glanville, however, is an admirable example of the truly good English girl whose Puritanism is not an affectation but a part of her nature, and Vivian Gregory is an equally good specimen of the fair-minded, open-hearted, yet level-headed, young Englishman of the day.
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