The Jolly Roger. By Hume Nisbet. (Digby, Long, and Co.)—
Mr. Nisbet has not been altogether successful in his attempt to impart a sense of reality to his story of "sea heroes and pirates" in the reign of James I. There is plenty of spirit and power of painting displayed in The jolly Roger, but none of the incidents are worked out with that attention to details necessary if one is to receive a really vivid impression of a scene. Mr. Nisbet is an artist, and wields the brush even better than the pen; so that we have plenty of colouring, which, however, for the reason given above, is not always so effective as it might be. The beginning of the voyage is fairly well written, and the description of the pirate city of Laverne, an island somewhere off South America, has an attractive gorgeousness of colouring, if it is somewhat coarse, while the great expedition to the Spanish Main is well done; but the author is not a powerful enough writer to impress us with his witch eleven hundred years old, and other creatures of his imagination. Alsander, however, is certainly a striking man. The style is not always equal to the promise of the beginning ; extremely modern expressions creep in, and the grammar is occa- sionally doubtful. The personality of Shakespeare is brought in, not unsuccessfully, and The Jolly Roger, with all its faults, is worth reading.
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