CURRENT LITERATURE.
Stray Papers. By John Ormsby. (Smith and Elder.)—These Stray Papers have, we suppose, appeared before, and have doubtless amused, many readers. We do not intend to disparage them, when we say that a condition of " straying " snits them best. They would show to better advantage when contrasting their gaiety and brightness with the gravity of ethical or political essays. And it would certainly not tell against them, were we not to be able to read more than one of them at a time.- Still, if they are worthy, as doubtless they are, of something more than an ephemeral existence, we must take them as they are, not without thanks to the writer, for they are certainly entertaining. Their humour is of a kind which we shall best describe by comparing them to a volume of which they most remind us, "Sketches by Boz." Mr. Ormsby has something of Charles Dickens's keen faculty of observation, and his style is formed on the same model. " A Day's Pleasure with the Criminal Classes " is an excellent specimen of this kind of writing. Sometimes- we have a flash of genuine wit, as when he says of a certain kind of oratory, that it "would carry conviction to all who have ears and are- led by them." Perhaps the best thing in the volume is the " Baker- Street Valhalla." This, about Madame Tussaud's material, is very good :—" As wax is, so is human greatness,—a thing which has no- necessary or inherent durability ; a thing of extreme delicacy, liable to- destruction from accident, but which, bar accidents, may last for an indefinite period. With wax as your medium for representing the heroic, you need be under no apprehensions as to the permanence of your hero. You stand committed to nothing. If his fame resist the• wear-and-tear of time and circumstance, so, with ordinary care, will your wax. If the policy of your minister is proved to have been blind, if the tactics of your military genius are proved to have been blunders, if year murderer is reprieved or turns out to be innocent, you have only to melt him down, and remould his plastic substance into a worthier and more popular form." Good, too, is this application,—" The old order changeth, yielding place to new ;' the statesman whose fame- has faded makes way for Dr. Kenealy, and half a dozen obsolete assassins. are absorbed in a life-size Claimant." Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Orion in the Dog-star.'"
Previous page
