John o' London a Romance of the Days of Roger
Bacon, by Somerville Gibney (Ward and Downey), is one of the most readable, most carefully written, most compactly put together, and most life. like historical fictions we have read for a long time. As its alternative title indicates, its " action " takes place in the times of Roger Bacon. Roger himself and his marvellous inventions rather flit across its pages than dominate or pervade them, and supply the comic rather than the serious element in it. But the ecclesiastical and social history of England about the middle of the thirteenth century (when Grostete, Bishop of Lincoln, and patron to the hero of the story, was at war with the Papal power), with its lawlessness, its Jadenhetse, and what not, is admirably reproduced. The hero and heroine, John Marmion (who develops into John o London), and Blanch Scovyll, who are boy-and-girl lovers, are united after many vicissitudes,—canoed, in the first place, by the stormy nature of the times in which they live; and, in the second, by the machinations of John's personal enemy, Ralph Scroop. Blench finds a Rebecca for her Rowena in Rachel Moss, a Jewish maiden whom John befriends, and who loses her life for John's sake ; and there is just a little of Robin Hood in Adam Gordon, the bluff robber who finds in the fearless and inventive John, an opponent that is more than his match. There is a good deal of humour in this story, particularly in the childish love- making of John and Blanch, and the author manages his (or her) historical draperies with almost perfect success.
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