NOTE ON "FOREST HILL."
WE are informed that Forest Hill is the first production of a young lady "in her twenty-third year." This fact explains whilst it ex- cuses the wildness and crudeness of the story which we commented on in our review; and renders the easy buoyancy and untiring vigour of the composition still more remarkable, as well as the living manners dis- played in the book. The striking effects of the "situations" are equally singular; but perhaps the most singular feature of all is the mastery, or at least the maturity, of the handling: and these things, coming in such contrast to the more important parts of a fiction, may cause Forest Hill to be undervalued in comparison with inferior books, where every- thing is upon a level, and the reader is not provoked by such a striking contrast. Still, these qualities, however remarkable, only aid, they do not make the novelist; they are rather secondary properties than essen- tial attributes, which last he must have in common with the narrative or dramatic poet. These are—a masterly comprehension of the events and probabilities of life in the particular age in which the story is laid, and a refined moral sense ; by which we do not mean a mere social, con- ventional, or theoretical idea of practical morality, but a keen perception of the minutest shades of difference between culpability and criminality, error and fault, weakness or taint, so as to give to each person the virtues, vices, or failings that arc consistent with his nature, position, and the part he has to fill. These qualifications are, no doubt, difficult of attainment, even when the mind is competent to acquire them. The first cannot, perhaps, be mastered by observation alone, at least not in what is called "society," without some actual mingling in the business of life; and it is probably this actual knowledge of affairs which gives such an air of reality to the best stories of Cooper and Mar- ryat. The moral sense is more necessary, and probably more difficult. The canon in which Horace lays down its primary importance is of so deep a truth, that it is not fully apprehended save by those who have opportu- nities of seeing the innumerable wrecks of fictions upon the hidden rock of false or feeble morality. His advice is probably too general to be of much use; for, stripped of its poetical illustrations, it is neither more nor less than "Study moral philosophy " : but it will be found in the Epistola ad Pisones, (Art of Poetry) v. 309-316, beginning " Seri- bendi recte sapere est et principium et fons" ; though the subsequent directions to study nature- " Respicere exemplar vine morumcine jnbebo Doctum imitatorem, et versa bine ducere voces," may be advantageously perused, as well as the preceding section, where the Roman lays down the law that mere enthusiasm will not do. There must be art and labour as well as " ingenium."
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