Circe. By Babington White. 2 vols. (Ward, Lock, and Tyler.)-
We conclude that Circe is Mr. White's first attempt as a writer of fiction. It is a curious specimen of the inflated, grandiloquent kind of composition which very young authors are sometimes apt to mistake for eloquence. The novel is fall of sound and fury, and is amusing simply from its extravagance. Laurence Bell, the hero, is described as a man of great personal beauty and of extraordinary genius as an artist. He has long, loose, golden hair falling over his Byronic collar, profoundly blue eyes, and slender white hands, with tapering fingers and rose-tinted, filbert-shaped nails. At two and twenty he is the happy lover of a fair English girl, and the protege' of Mr. Mocatti, a picture-dealer. This gentleman-a stagey copy of Mephistopheles-pronounces that marriage and the cares of a family are inimical to genius, and strives to avert the evil by introducing Laurence to the Princess d'Aspromonte, who resides at "a classic villa, rich in marble courts,'
in the aristocratic region of Fulham ! The lady, whose social posi- tion is questionable, has great wealth and the remains, at least, of great beauty. In the artist's sight her " figure was the form of a goddess, her eyes the stars of a tropical night, her shoulders. the animated marble of a Pygmalion. The Princess loves admiration, but is thoroughly heartless. She exercises her fascination upon the artist, raves ridiculously about his genius and genius in general, and snares him in her toils at the first interview. Mocatti, who has driven Bell to- Fulham behind his " fiery chestnuts, which tear westward like demon steeds newly let loose from the Plutonian stables," is delighted with the- result of the journey. He believes that he has rescued his charge from the "muddy vortex of domestic life ;" that the old love will be forgotten and forsaken, the artist win immortal renown, and the picture-dealer obtain a more substantial reward. Bell, we are told,. feels a wild throbbing in his breast, a quenchless fire in his veins, and determines to link his name eternally with that of the princess. To. effect this grand object he "dashes at the canvas like an inspired: demon." How an inspired demon would paint a picture we cannot tell, for Mr. White does not inform as, but he does attempt to portray the actions of a man of genius enthralled by a foolish passion, and, to our thinking, fails egregiously in the effort. Our complaint is that the story is wholly devoid of sanity. The hero is a mad fool through-, oat, and very appropriately becomes insane at last, but the mental hal'. lucinations of Laurence Bell are not, we suppose, shared in by that novelist. Yet the tale is more like an absurd nightmare than a picture. of human life. The reader who takes up Circe will find himself smiling when he should be serious, and bored when he ought to be excited. One. advantage, perhaps, the novel possesses. It contains so much of fin& writing and so little of character or action, that it can be easily resat through in a short after-dinner hour. It is hard to criticize this harshly what seems like the first venture of a young writer, but criticism is use- less if it be not just, and we hope that Mr. White is wise enough to. prefer honest censure to indiscriminate praise. Let us hope, too, that
will live to do something better, and then we have little doubt that he will agree with us in our estimate of Circe.
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