Lucian the Dreamer. By T. S. Fletcher. (Methuen and Co.
6s.)—Mr. Fletcher's story is rather like the career of his hero,— the promise is good, but the performance poor. The opening of the story is excellent, and the author's study of the child Lucian is both convincing and interesting. But in a work of fiction, as in a real life; the opening chapters are merely promise; and the value of the story, as of the life, depends on how this promise is fulfilled. As the development of the hero is the chief motive of the story, its interest depends necessarily on the fulfilment of the promise of that hero's childhood. Mr. Fletcher tells us in the later chapters that his hero became a great poet, but the reader is not convinced. Lucian lives as long as he is a child, and the author shows the working of his mind. Later on we have to be content with a bald statement of what he has become, and the result is that Mr. Fletcher's hero becomes a puppet. It is a great pity that the book is not kept up to the level of the first ten chapters,—we might then have congratulated its author on the production of an interesting and original study of character. As it is, we can only deplore that the carrying out of the story is not equal to its conception.
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