A Man of the Moors. By Halliwell Sutcliffe. (Kegan Paul,
Trench, and Co.)—A dreary and unpleasant story, though not without power. Mr. Halliwell Sutcliffe is evidently a keen observer of Nature, and there is much poetry in his descriptions of the Yorkshire moors. The hero of the book is Griff Lomax— whom the author most accurately describes as a "Pagan "—and his fights and adventures are related with great spirit. Indeed. Griff and his mother are the only characters in the work which seem really alive. Most of the others—the women especially— behave as no human beings would ever act in real life. The episode of Roddick and Janet reads like an imitation of "Jane Eyre " ; but Mr. Sutcliffe has not the wonderful genius which enabled Charlotte Bronte to reconcile her readers to the most unlikely events. The consequence is that his version, both in morality and probability, falls far short of the famous original. It has the further drawback of leading up to a gratuitously horrible ending, which jars painfully upon the reader.
Previous page
