A MODERN LOVER.* Wirer Tito Melema was in the grand
life of Romola, Mr. George Moore's very cleverly drawn " modern lover " is, in the several lives of three women who love him, trust him, and sacrifice themselves to him, each in her different way and according to the opportunities afforded them by his various needs at the time.
Of the refined and poetical tone and atmosphere of the book that gave us an unrivalled picture of moral good-for-nothingness in old Florentine days, there is no trace in this essentially modern story; they are replaced by plain prose, and realism which, while it is not coarse, and, unlike the tone of the "natural- istic" writers (for whom we suspect Mr. Moore of an admiration much to be deplored), does not offend, takes the gilt off the gin-
gerbread of sentiment, and ignores romance in a more thorough style than we are accustomed to, except in the utterances of pro- fessed cynics. The author of A Modern Lover is not a cynic; he not only recognises, but he respects goodness, purity, and dis-
interestedness, and although the story he tells is all about the woeful waste of those feelings upon a person absolutely un- worthy of them, he is quite alive to the pity of it, and gives his readers the notion that he really would have liked to make Lewis Seymour a better fellow, if he could. He cannot, how-
ever, for A Modern Lover is not a bit of a built-up story ; it has a very uncommon note of spontaneity ; it tells itself, and its
faults are the defects of its qualities of moderation and sincerity. The book has more power than the story ; the characters have more interest than the incidents ; the first volume is the best as a conception and a composition, but the third is superior to it as a picture of society : it gives a clever evolution of char- acter without exaggeration, and a view of modern life which, while it is tinged with pessimism, is not scornful or bitter, but on the whole tolerant and good-humoured.
The " naturalism " that Mr. Moore occasionally affects does not come to him by nature. Certain passages of his novel make us aware that he admires and would fain imitate Zola and his odious school ; but we venture to predict that he will never succeed in doing this. He has to combat two powerful obstacles to an achievement so much to be regretted ; they are the faith of a Christian and the instincts of a gentleman. If M. Zola, or any of the hogs of his sty, could write such an episode as that with which the story opens, that of the first woman who sacrifices herself to save the penniless artist, an episode in which the key- note to the character of Lewis Seymour is struck, we should have as much hope for them as we have confidence in Mr. Moore's future work ;—even they might yet " purge, and live cleanly." It would be difficult to praise too highly the strength, truth, delicacy, and pathos of the incident of Gwynnie Lloyd, and the admirable treatment of the great sacrifice she makes when, in his utter destitution, and under the influence of his threat to commit suicide, she consents to sit to Lewis Seymour for the nude figure of Venus. The incident is depicted with skill and beauty. The author does not again reach that point ; his later materials are more common-place. Here is the key-note passage :-
"' For goodness' sake, don't cry like that, Gwynnie!' said Lewis, with tears in his eyes ; I am sorry I asked you ; let's say no more about it.' At the sound of his voice the girl stopped crying, and, looking up at him, said, 'I will sit for you, Lewis, since it is neces- sary ; but I'm not a bad girl, nor do I wish to be ; but it cannot be right to see you starve or drown yourself, when I can save you.'— Lewis did not speak. He knew that she suffered, although he didn't exactly know why. His was a soft, sensuous nature, that instinc- tively took the easiest road to walk in, without a thought whether it was the right or the wrong one."
How the girl, a humble, little, Methodist shopwoman, accom- plishes her task, what her horror is when she sees upon the canvas the naked figure that is herself; how she feels that what she has done for him must part them; her flight, and the ease and readi- ness with which, when the pinch of poverty is taken off him, he accepts her absence as a very good thing, and reflects that she might have been a clog and a nuisance to him; and how strictly consistent with this the future conduct of the favourite of fortune and the spoilt child of society is,—the reader will learn from a story in which there is nothing strained or distorted. The author depeqds for his tragedy not upon violent vices, but upon the mere ordinary, inevitable development of a
man's unprincipled selfishness, and, without any grim cata- strophe, leaves him prosperous, comfortable, successful, and found out by the three women who, among the multitude of his flatterers, have really and truly loved him.
• A Modern Lover. By George Moore. London : Tinsley Brothers. And the women ? Mr. Moore is not so successful in his por- traiture of Mrs. Bentham as in that of Lady Helen ; the former is rather shadowy, we do not feel that the author himself knows her very well, or has her always clearly before him ; but the outline is a fine one, and the infatuation that makes such a woman love so absolutely poor and self-engrossed a creature as Lewis Sey- mour, is even less intelligible than in the case of Lady Helen. We do not, however, question its truth to nature and the society of the time. Conceit, effeminacy, and affectation have gained a footing in this generation which every observer is forced to recognise. There is a great chasm between this time and the " north-easter " days of Yeast and Westward Ho ! There was not a little affectation about the muscularity and the manliness of those days too; but the ideal women of their poetry and their romance were women of a higher type than any novelist who is not to be contented with mere success would now venture to draw, and the aim and scope of their fiction were as different from the aim and scope of the fiction of this time as the Pyrrhic phalanx from the Pyrrhic dance.
Mr. Moore's is, then, not an ideal novel ; it is a study from life, and lifelike,—more's the pity ! It is faulty, but always in- teresting; it has both pathos and humour, and it is pervaded by a frank, revealing spirit that tells of observation of men and things, intelligent, not malicious, and common. sensical. The world and its way neither take in this writer, nor do they disgust him ; he sees the poetry of things, but he knows that it is the prose of them that lasts ; he is just as much " up to " the jargons of humanity as ever was the thunderous philosopher of Chelsea ; but he does not thunder, —he listens, smiles, and makes a note of them. Art jargon, the affectations of criticism, and the huggermugger of Art Societies have not been better exemplified than by his Mr. Harding, Mr. Thompson, and other members of Seymour's social world. All this portion of the book is characterised by judg- ment; it is not overdone, it is not offensively personal, it is amusing and true. The author's style leaves much to be desired. He passes from English into French as abruptly as Dick Swiveller passed into scraps of verse, "as if they were only prose in a hurry," with the incoherence of a man who is accus. tomed to think in either language indifferently ; and he has not looked after the printers' errors in his French. His sentences are occasionally, let us say, haphazard ; not exactly ungram- matical, but wanting in accuracy. The literary method is defective, but the work is one which will make its mark,—the best sort of mark for an author, for it means that its readers will look with expectation for its successor.
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