CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Birthright. By Joseph Hocking. (James Bowden.)—This volume proves beyond all doubt that Mr. Hocking has mastered the art of the historical romancist. The Birthright is, in its way, quite as well constructed, as well written, and as full of incident as any story that has come from the pen of Mr. Conan Doyle or Mr. Stanley Weyman. It is a story of Cornwall and of a feud between two Cornish families, the Tressiders and the Penning- tons. It is the mission of Jasper Pennington, who tells the story, to recover the property of which he has been defrauded by a Tressider, and in this mission, being a man of thews and sinews worthy of John Ridd himself, he succeeds, in spite of Tressiders and smugglers, imprisonment and attempted murder. In addition he succeeds in securing Naomi Peuryn as his wife. The book labours under the distinct disadvantage of being told in the first person, but Mr. Hocking contrives to overcome this by sheer bustle of adventure and vigour of dialogue. There is a certain commonplaceness about the troubles of Naomi, and the treasure-finding which brings the story to a satisfactory close is a very familiar device. But it is managed with almost perfect success. The only serious blunder, indeed, that Mr. Hocking has committed is the introduction of John Wesley into the story. Such introduction is, of course, perfectly legitimate in a historical romance, if it is effectively managed. It cannot be said, how- ever, that Mr. Hocking has succeeded in a possibly too ambitious enterprise. At all events the Wesley We have here is not the great man and great organiser known to history.
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