MRS. OLIPHANTS HISTORICAL SKETCHES.

13y some oversight, the first edition of this book passed unnoticed in our columns, and the fact that it has already reached a second -edition may seem a practical refutation of any unfavourable .criticism. Yet though we are not surprised at such a welcome being given to these interesting sketches, we feel bound to show that they are far below the level of the work which we expect from Mrs. Oliphant. Their merits lie on the surface. The materials are good and are well worked up ; the people to whom we are in- troduced are notable and have striking characteristics ; the writing -is pleasant, and the faculty of quotation has been freely but judiciously exercised. Here, however, our praise must stop. We cannot see that Mrs. Oliphant has done more than compile skilfully, .and arrange the results of that work in a tempting manner. She has drawn largely upon her authorities ; she does not seem to have used her own eyes or her own mind. There is an utter dearth of original remark about all the papers with the exception perhaps of the paper on Wesley. What Mrs. Oliphant's characters said or wrote about themselves, what their contemporaries said or wrote .about them, the events of their lives, their friendships and enmities, their works and their struggles, are faithfully recorded. The judgments of subsequent historians on the public men of that time, and of critics upon its poets, are either referred to openly, or have -exercised a half-unconscious influence on the formation of opinion. But we have not the writer's own views, and the reason is that she does not realize her subject. She does not sketch the reign of -George IL; she gossips about it. Except in those cases where she has a contemporary portrait which she can copy, she does not bring her characters before us. If we have a sketch of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, it is from the pen of Horace Walpole, not -of Mrs. Oliphant ; and for David Hume we are indebted solely to Lord Charlemont. This deficiency is almost frankly confessed in the chapter on Sir Robert Walpole. "A sort of rubicund .shadow," says Mrs. Oliphant, "drinking, toasting, trolling forth lusty songs, swearing big oaths, full of healthy heartlessness and good-humour and indifference to all codes either of love or morals, faintly appears by moments about the busy scene. Such a buxom apparition is apt to look very limp and lifeless across the vista of -a century." It did not look limp and lifeless to Thackeray, we think, nor did the lecture on the second of the Georges present us with a group of lay figures. But to Mrs. Oliphant all the men and -women of that time are shadows, unless she has a sympathy with -them, as she has with Wesley, or sees their pictures hanging before cher, as in the case of Hume and Lady Mary.

The first of these historical sketches takes a higher tone than is preserved in the rest. Mrs. Oliphant begins with paying a com- pliment to Queens, which strikes the reader as novel, if not original, and we have some hopes of being presented with a new conception -of the reign of George II. We are told that Queen Caroline was the real Sovereign and George the King only in name, and before this assertion is verified we are invited to pause and consider that all .queen-regnants have been remarkable characters. Mrs. Oliphant's theory shall be given in her own words :— " There is something in the position of sovereign which seems to -develop and call forth the qualities of a woman beyond that of any other occupation. The number of reigning women has, no doubt, been very limited ; but it is curious to note how kindly the feminine mind takes to the trade of ruling whenever the opportunity occurs to it. It Is perhaps the only branch of mental work in which it has attained a .true and satisfactory greatness. The only queen-regnant we know of who was nobody was our own placid Queen Anne. Such names as those of Isabella of Castile, of Elizabeth, and Maria Theresa are very illustrious examples of this fact. The historian cannot regard those pnneely personages with tho ctaidescending approbation which critics in -every other branch of science and art extend to women. They are great monarchs, figures that stand fully out against the background of history in the boldest and most forcible lines ; and that in very absolute -contradiction to all conventional theories."

It is true that Caroline was not Queen-regnant, but that only

Historical Sketches of The Reign of George II. By Mrs. Oliphant Second Edition. Edinburgh and London: Blackwood. 1870. strengthens the theory. If she was so remarkable as a Queen Consort, what would she have been as an actual ruler? From all accounts, it was more difficult for her to manage her husband than it would have been to manage the kingdom, and thus we have a double proof of her capacity. It is unfortunate that throughout Mrs. Oliphant's paper we have to take that capacity for granted. Lord Hervey and popular rumour assure us several times that the King was a puppet in the hands of the Queen, and that is quite enough for Mrs. Oliphant.. But whatever may be the value of the fact, the historical sketcher ought to make us see the process. As we run through contemporary chronicles, we have, no doubt, "the little King strutting and storming, losing to opportunity to declare that the Queen never meddled with his business, and strong in the notion of inaugurating a new regime; and the falter- ing, unprepared, new minister, who stammers, and hesitates, and turns to his rival and predecessor for instruction what to do ; and burly Sir Robert standing by, not without a humorous twinkle in his eye, aware that his own interests as well as those of the country are at stake, yet not quite able to resist the comic fea- tures of the scene ; and Caroline behind, cautiously pulling the strings that move her royal puppet, anxiously watching the changes of his temper and his countenance." Yet this sum- mary of Mrs. Oliphant's reading is just what ought to have formed the backbone of her sketch. We ought to have seen these things, not to have been told of them. As it is, the glimpses of Caroline's life given us by the help of Lord Hervey rather prove that the King did what he liked with her than that she was the ruler. By submitting to all his caprices, by bearing all his rudeness, by en- couraging him in infidelity to herself, she may have humoured him so that he fancied he was independent. But here we see the humouring only, not any of its results. We have a scene in which the King abuses everything in which the Queen takes an interest, while her attempts either to mollify or disarm him only add to the tempest. We have him almost bullying her on her death-bed, and her parting injunction to him to be as faithless to a new wife as he had been to her. The spirit of management was certainly combined in this case with that of self-sacrifice, and under Mrs. Oliphant's guidance we have to take the first on credit. On the whole, however, the sketch of the Queen is above the average. The quotations from Lord Hervey's memoirs, though marked by that abuse of antithesis which gave the crowning sting to Pope's character of Sports, and which makes Lord Hervey an unsafe guide whenever he leaves facts for impressions, are often sparkling and almost witty. We do not see what connection the dramatic sketch in which Lord Hervey represented himself as playing a trick on the Court by the announcement of his death, has to do with Mrs. Oliphant's theory of the Queen's supremacy, but parts of it are extremely readable. Take the following bit of drawing- room conversation QUEEN (to 1st Court Lady).—' I believe you found it very dusty?'

"is; COURT LADY.—' Very dusty, madam.' "QUEEN (to 2nd Court Lady).—' Do you go soon into the country,

madam ?'

" 2ND COURT LADY.= Very soon, madam.'

"QUEEN (to 3rd Court Lady).—' The town is very empty, I believe,

madam ?'

"3RD COURT LADY.—' Very empty, madam.'

"QUEEN (to 4th C3urt Lady).—' I hope all your family is very well,

madam ?'

" 4TH COURT LADY.= Very well, madam.'

"QUEEN (to 5111 Court Lady).--' We have had the finest summer for

walking in the world.'

"5TH COURT LADY.—' Very fine, madam."

We do not propose to dwell upon any of the other chapters at the same length. It is significant of Mrs. Oliphant's treatment of her characters that the interest attaching to them varies in an inverse proportion to their eminence. Those whom we know beat, and who stand out in boldest relief from the people surrounding them, show to the smallest advantage, while the persons with whom we are least familiar, and who have generally been passed over by for- mer writers, are brought prominently forward. • This is evident if we compare Pope with Richardson. Mrs. Oliphant could hardly be expected to add to our knowledge of the first, but if she could do nothing more than repeat the old stories about his less inviting qualities, she might as well have kept silence. In a gallery of his- torical sketches, we should not naturally pause to observe that "the Poet" was crooked in figure, weak in health, niggardly in his hospitality, petty in his spite. All this and more has been said over and over again, and Mrs. Oliphant has merely dilutectinto a long paper the few sentences of overpowering virulence with which Macaulay vindicated the memory of Addison. In the chapters on Richardson we have many characteristic touches from the novelist's own letters which are at once fresh and happy, while if the criticisms

on Richardson's novels are more in the nature of a review than a character, they have, at all events, a direct bearing on the man. Perhaps, however, the best instance given us in this volume of what we may call the illustration of the known by the unknown, is the passage about Lord Chesterfield's letters. Most critics in dis- cussing them have looked to their indications of the character of their writer. Mrs. Oliphant views them chiefly, if not exclusively, in the effect they produced on their recipient :— " We have no absolute ground on which to form a judgment of what this boy was. He appears to us in the curious seclusion of a being con- tinually addressed but never replying, covered as with a veil of silence and passive opposition. We do not know that he put himself in opposi- tion; indeed what evidence there is would seem to say that he never -opposed anything in actual words ; but the fact that all the volumes -addressed to him are left without audible reply, invests the unseen figure with this air of resistance, silent and unexpressed. So far as appears, Philip Stanhope must have been a lout of learning, sufficiently good in- tentions, and talent enough to be the despair of any ambitious father —a .boy capable of solid instruction to any amount, taking in his education with a certain stolid persistence, and following the counsels addressed to him with exasperating docility, but no sort of spontaneous impulse. As we glance over the brilliant, worldly, hideous pages—the often repeated injunctions, the elaborately varied advice, the repitition, line upon line and precept upon precept, of all that code of manners and morals,—a pro- found pity for the unhappy lad upon whom this stream descended will by times move the mind of the reader. How it must have worried, vexed, -disquieted, and discouraged the cub who was more bear than lion !—.how his languid ambition must have sickened and his feeble desires languished under the goad of that enthusiasm which never flags !--how he must have hated the mere idea of 'pleasing' or attempting to please ! We have no record that the boy was wicked, as he might well have been. -Judging by human nature in general, indeed, one would be more dis- posed to believe that he must have subsided into dull virtue, of that tame -domestic order which dismayed his father's soul. Such a hypothesis would be justified by the discovery of his marriage, which Chesterfield made only after his death. In his wanderings over the Continent and in his life in Paris he appears but dimly, under the rain of command, counsel, direction, criticism, raillery, and persuasion, which shrouds him round like a mist. The position is tragic from the father's side, but it is half absurd and half pitiful on that of the son. If any kind of response had but come now and then out of the stillness, it would have broken the spell a little. Bat the voiceless soul stands mute, and takes all in- -or throws all off from the armour of amour propre and self-will—one -cannot tell which. It is the most curious situation, humorous, touching, laughable."

That Mrs. Oliphant has no real sympathy with the age which she describes appears in many places, and does much to explain the lifelessness of her sketches. She has a vivid regard for John Wes- ley, a sort of patriotic admiration for Sir Robert Walpole, a loyal pity for the Queen, and a touch of disloyal pity for the Pretender. Some of her other characters she esteems, and for others she has a lurking fondness. But she thinks the age itself thoroughly bad ; she scolds it right through one paper for its nastiness, and recurs to that word with a vigour which we regret to say, is to us somewhat too suggestive. "We have no intention or -desire," says she, of the Court dialect of the day, "to enter into that fossil nastiness." Still she speaks of it with some amount of familiarity, and has evidently tried it by a standard of comparison. -Of course it is impossible for anyone to study the letters and memoirs of that time without coming upon much that is opposed -to modern tastes, and Mrs. Oliphant may well rejoice that the -mode has changed. But one does not revive an earlier period merely for the sake of expressing one's antipathies. Jeffrey, if we remember right, declared that one of his contributors was -best adapted to review a certain book because he hated the author and knew the subject. Mrs. Oliphant seems to have applied this • principle to the reign of George II., yet however it may answer in a review, it is ill suited to an historical portrait-gallery.