RECENT NOVELS.*

THERE is really something wonderful about Mr. Clark Russell, —at least there is something which must always seem wonderful to the ordinary landsman. To such a person the sailor's life is in the larger metaphorical, as well as in the narrower literal sense, cabin'd, cribb'd, confined; it seems a life which has, comparatively speaking, so small an area of possibilities, that invention in traversing the region soon reaches the boundary on every side, and if it is to keep moving can only retrace its steps. And yet what more com- plete refutation of this view could we possibly have than that which is provided by the work of Mr. Clark Russell. He has been writing sea-stories for many years; he has been a rapid and prolific producer; even a one-volume edition of his books would fill a long shelf, and yet in his latest novel, The Convict Ship, there is neither diminution of gusto or lapse into repetition,—it is as vigorous and fresh as The Wreck of the Grosvenor or John Holdsworth, Chief Mate. A song that was popular in the early years of this century told the story of an enamoured maiden who donned maritime masculine attire that she might become shipmate to her lover, who had been seized by the press-gang. Marian Johnstone in Mr. Clark Russell's absorbing story follows this example, though under different circumstances from those of the ballad heroine. Her lover Captain Butler, is, for the time being, not a sailor but a convict, found guilty on perjured evidence, of the crime of scuttling his ship, and sentenced to the now obsolete fate of transportation. Mr. Clark Russell is very skilful in endowing Marian with a certain masculinity which fits her for her difficult part without seriously impairing her feminine charm, and her adventures on the convict ship never for a single chapter cease to bold us. The central incident—the capture of the ship by the convicts—is not quite so exciting as are certain similar incidents in the author's previous works, because we know that the persons in whom we are mainly interested are • (1.) The Convict Ship. By W. Clark Hassell. ^o vols. London: Cbatto and Windas.— (2.) The Three Graces. By Mrs. Hungerford. 2 vols. London: Matto and Windas.—(8.) Tandem. By W. B. Woodgate. 2 vols. London: Hurst and Blackest.—(4.) Myrtle and Ivy. By J. A. Bridges. 2 vols. London : Ward and Downey.—(5 ) The Holy Estate : a Study in Morals. By W. H. Wilkins (W. H. de Winton, and Frank Thatcher. 8 •ola. London: Hutchinson and Co.—(6.) The Vengeance of James Vansitt art. By Mrs. J. H. Needell. London: Hutchinson and Co.,—(7.) The Despotic Lady and Others. By W. 14. :Norris. London: Methuen and Co.

perfectly safe; but as a chapter of spirited action it holds its own with anything that Mr. Clark Russell has done. The Convict Ship is, in short, a story which only one living man could have written.

There is something very agreeable in Mrs. Hungerford's bright, vivacious, carelessly written stories ; but, unlike the novels of Mr. Clark Russell, they do not number among their charms the charm of variety. Almost all the materials of the latest of them may be found in any of its numerous fore- runners. There are the charming girls, the nice young men who are provided to match them, the very talkative and rather irrational seniors, the invariable and inevitable comic young Irishman, and those who have liked these old acquaint- ances in days of yore will probably be pleased to see them again, though our own feeling is that, with lapse of time, they have lost colour and become less entertaining than of old. Mr. Grace, the fatuous and cross-grained father of the three girls (for in her title Mrs. Hungerford indulges in a pun), is a good deal less humorous and a good deal more fatiguing than we think he was intended to be, and even the girls have "gone off" somewhat, as if they were tired of playing the part of heroine, and could no longer throw into the impersonation the old spirit. Unfortunately, the one thing in the book which has a look of novelty was anticipated half a lifetime ago by Wilkie Collins. The idea of a blind girl being betrothed to one man, and on the restoration of her sight greeting his brother as her fiance, is by no means a bad idea to use once, but it will not stand a second cooking; and a good deal more was made of it in Poor Miss Finch than Mrs. Hungerford has succeeded in making of it in The Three Graces. Though the author has found a public which is numerous and not exacting, it will probably consider her new book a trifle flat, and we must regretfully add that this is our own impression.

It is hardly likely that any one would think of calling Mr. Woodgate's Tandem. fiat. It is far too friskily vivacious for such an epithet, and we may add that it is also much too absurd, for there is a certain high degree of absurdity which in itself suffices to make a book somewhat entertaining. Even had not Mr. Woodgate contributed a capital volume to the " Badminton Library," the internal evidence supplied by his present story would suffice to prove him an admirable authority on shooting, fishing, and the like; but it is obvious that the most eneyclopndic knowledge of sport does not in- volve acquaintance with even the elementary principles of the art of fiction. Mr. Woodgate in building up the something to which we will give the courtesy title of plot, is too auda- cious for even the ordinary Mudie subscriber who is prepared to swallow a most stodgy dish of audacity. When in ordinary fiction a man or woman disappears and we have news—accom- panied by the moat apparently satisfactory evidence—of his or her death, we are quite prepared for the reappearance of the supposed corpse at a convenient or inconvenient season. But Jack Bruce does not disappear ; he is seized with Asiatic cholera, he dies, he is screwed down in his coffin, and buried, so to speak, before our very eyes; and yet at the end of the second volume he suddenly reveals his identity with our familiar friend Burton, having in the meantime proposed marriage to his own daughter, who luckily refuses him. The general absurdity of Tandem is tempered by some mildly amusing episodes ; but Mr. Woodgate's mistake has been in writing a novel at all. The resurrection of Bruce, and the luckless courtship of Captain Stairs, would, we think, provide capital material for a three-act farcical comedy.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said—we quote from memory—that every man of mature age could draw from his own experience at least one three-volume noveL Mr. J. A. Bridges in Myrtle and Ivy gives us only two volumes ; but we cannot help thinking that a good deal of what is in them may be described as " his own cocoon." As a formal work of narrative art the story has its defects ; indeed, there is not much form of any kind, and it may be doubted whether the writer has improved his work by his attempt to infuse into it the special land of interest given by a " constructed " story. Its attractiveness, unless we have made a ludicrously wrong guess, lies in that portion of it which is wrought out of the stores of memory rather than out of the spoils of invention. Mr. Bridges is really a very artless writer; but there is something of capital art in the way in which he embodies the very spirit' of- tilt' well-known stanza on his title-page :— " Oh talk not to me of a name great in story; The days of our youth are the days of our glory; And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty Are worth all your laurels though ever so plenty."

We make the acquaintance of that wholesome and likeable fellow Tom long before he reaches the age of sweet two-and- twenty, and perhaps the .story of his Eton days and of his boyish experiences in a hunting country are among the best things in Myrtle and Ivy. There is nothing in any way noteworthy about the book, but it is enjoyable, and this is a time when to call a novel enjoyable is high praise.

The Holy Estate, a novel of two-man power, is certainly not enjoyable,—at any rate it is quite impossible that it should be found so by any person of normally healthy tastes. The book is described in its sub-title as "a study in morals," we presume on the lucus a non lucendo principle, as with a majority of the prominent characters morals have no existence. After mixing, even in imagination, with such people as Captain Dampier, Sir John Bradford, and Miss LaRue L'Estrange, one feels that one ought to be disinfected ; and the aathors' presentation of them accentuates their full- flavoured unpleasantness. Nowadays, unfortunately, if one describes a novel as indecent, one probably does more to increase than to diminish its circulation, so we hasten to say that The Holy Estate is entirely lacking in that piquant in- decency which appeals pleasantly to readers of the baser sort ; the worst things in it are simply revolting in a vulgar and dull kind of way. We will not attempt to decide whether, in the main, the Indian chapters of Captain Thatcher or the English chapters of Mr. Wilkins are the more unpleasant ; but the most nauseating thing in the book—a conversation between an American girl and her English fiance—stands to the credit, or discredit, of Mr. Wilkins. One thing we do hope, that the book will not be boycotted at any of the great libraries. These boycotts are the best advertisements for stuff that is worse than worthless.

Mrs. J. H. Needell's one-volume story, The Vengeance of James Vansittart, though melodramatic in parts and dread- fully dismal throughout, is a strong piece of work. A revenge which survives the death of its original object by some twenty- five years, acquiring force by repression, and is then shot out in a sudden bolt at the head of an innocent young man, whose only crime lies in the fact that he is his father's son, is not a passion that it is easy to depict with anything like convincing- ness of rendering. It is only credible as a monomania, and, unless we are very much mistaken, Mrs. Needell intends us to

regard James Vansittart as a monomaniac. As such he is

necessarily less interesting than an ordinarily constituted human being, and though the two or three scenes in which he is a prominent actor are certainly the most impressive things in the book, they are hardly the passages which give to the

story its real power. Mrs. Needell puts her best work into the pair of contrasted portraits which fill so much of her canvas,—

the weakly selfish and selfishly weak Maurice Vansittart (who is completely demoralised by his uncle's horrible vengeance), and the young wife, Diana, whose situation is more pitiable still, but who is braced up by the shock to a devotion which

lacks the aid of love, and is sustained only by the vivid realisation of a great duty. Mrs. Needell has done some good work during recent years, but the character of Diana Vansittart is, we think, her finest achievement.

Some pleasant hours may be spent with The Despotic Lady, and Others. Mr. W. E. Norris's novels are capital reading ;

but we think that for simple undiluted entertainment his short stories are better still,—at any rate, we cannot remember one of the three-volumed performances that we prefer to this

collection of half-a-dozen light, bright tales. They are all good ; but the title-story, which is pure comedy, and the last story, "An Unresolved Discord," which is comedy with just a trace of tragic admixture, are more than good,—they are excellent. There is nothing complex in the story of

the defeat of the obstinate and clever Lady Maunsell by the still more wily campaigner, General Langdale ; and yet there are very few elaborate novels—very few even of ,Mr. Norris's own novels—which exhibit so much solid thinking in what we may call the diplomacy of fiction, as is to be found in the hundred and forty-seven not very crowded pages of this amusing tale. Nothing could be better than the way in which the General makes Lady Mansell do just what he wants her to do, and yet leaves her with the impression that she has dealt him a crushing blow. It is most admirable fooling,—the perfection of high comedy ; and yet there is perhaps even finer and more subtle art in the story of the simple, good-natured, moody egotist to which Mr. Norris devotes his final pages. The vain, handsome, needy, musical vagrant who takes by storm the heart of a Peer's daughter, but who, when he has heard her attempts at singing, turns his back without a moment's hesitation upon her and good fortune, is almost a creation. At any rate he is a very effec- tive figure, and Mr. Norris has managed to make him not only effective, but credible, which is a much harder task. As for the other stories, two are distinctly amusing, two are pathetic, and all are well written ; but " The Despotic Lady " and " An Unresolved Discord " are undoubtedly the best, and they are very good indeed.