NOVELS.
POOR SONS OF A DAY.* Ir is one of the drawbacks of our tremendous "fictional output "—we use the commercial phrase deliberately because it is so largely a question, not of irresistible impulse, but of
mere manufacture—that now and then, in the process of inevitable selection imposed on editors and reviewers, a really
good book is submerged and overlooked. This has been the case with Poor Sons of a Day, and we offer. the author our sincere apologies for our delay in noticing his admirable romance
of the '45. Mr. McAuley has done good work before—work favourably noticed in these columns—which renders our seem- ing negligence all the more inexcusable. It only remains for
the present reviewer to make the amends by endeavouring to infect as many readers of the Spectator as possible with the desire to become familiar with a singularly fascinating novel.
Mr. hicAulay brings to his task many gifts, but above all, the ability to realise and convey to his readers—to quote
his own words—" the power, the charm, and the passion of a lost cause." The book is pre-eminently a study in personal magnetism, rendered all the more convincing by the easy, natural, and picturesque style of the writer. It lends itself readily to quotation, but we may content ourselves with the passage describing the setting forth of the young heir of Lettir to join Prince Charlie's army :—
" They [his parents] had let him go, and still buoyed them- selves up with contempt of the cause he went in and the Army he joined, which doubtless in a week or two would be dispersed by the regulars with little or no fighting. But their hearts misgave them, for they knew that the flower of their flock was gone. Yet they need not have grudged him. For the boy was to play a part in his country's history, in a scene the last of a long and romantic succession of scenes—instinct with a nation's poetry and painted in the blood of her heroes. He was to join a march surely one of the strangest that ever tramped to pipes and drums. For that very day, Prince Charles at the head of his forces set out from • Parr Sons of a Day. By. Allan Manlay. London ; Nisbet and Co. [6s.] Perth on the southward march which at first was attended with such dazzling success. There rode with the Prince upon this historic occasion the strangest medley of Persons from the highest to the lowest, and certainly one of the strangest and wildest of armies that ever was seen. Men of Athole and men of Strathmore and Strath Tay and Strathearn went there—Robert- sons and lKurrays and MacGregors and Ogilvies—wild tribes from the far Western isles—MacDonalds and MaeDougals and Chisholms and Gunns—Stewarts of Appin and Camerons under LochieL Proud men, and ill to deal with, were many of those who headed their septs or clans—haughty and jealous, and fired with an hundred spites and feuds. Woe be to the man, were he even the King or his son, who offended these—setting one before the other, or forgetting any matter, however small or trifling, of their ancient rights or privileges. Some. were faithful, and all were brave, and all risked much in this great adventure, but it some, times seems as though they thought more of themselves than of the Cause, and perhaps there are some that will not blame them in this. With these in a contrast queer enough rode many a canty lowland laird, saying little and boasting none, but leaving his prosperous house and ripening harvest in a fit of the dear old madness, so deep in his blood that nothing could say it nay. Men grown grey in the Cause's disappointments rode out to court them afresh—and striplings like John Ogilvie, with all their disappointments to come—and young men grown old before their time in Jacobite cares and contrivings like Aims MacGregor— and louts like Dicky Baxter, not knowing whither they went or why, cats'-paws of others more cunning than they. All the pride and all the panoply of war went there, high hearts and eager souls—and much of its pitifulness too, and so much of rags and riff-raff following behind, that it was no wonder perhaps that the persons in power, and the great English public under them, talked contemptuously of the 'Highland rabble,' little knowing the dance it would lead them. They heard of the rags but did not reckon with the tartans they were made of, or the wild hearts they covered—beating strong in a cause that was the cause of their fathers, having nearly the sacredness of religion itself."
The extract which we have given will, we think, make it suffi- ciently clear that Mr. McAuley is not a red-hot partisan, and that in regard to style he steers a mean course between preciosity and pedestrianism. Above all, he has what he ascribes to the young Pretender, "the priceless gift of com- municating his fire" ; or, to put it in another way, the magic of investing his characters with the human qualities which arrest and enchain the sympathies of the reader. In dealing with the fortunes of the house of Lettir, Mr. McAuley adopts the familiar situation of a family divided in its allegiance between the houses of Stuart and Hanover, of a Whig heroine and a Jacobite hero. But where there is abundant historical justification for such a course no excuse is necessary, always provided that the treatment is adequate; and Mr. McAulay's handling of his materials has just that vitalising touch which converts the reader into the spectator, not of a well- costumed puppet-show, but of a living drama. Mr. McAuley gives us types of all shades of Jacobitism, from interested in- triguers to the chivalrous victims of a tragical infatuation, and of all these victims there is perhaps no more pathetic figure than the loutish Dicky Baxter, forced into the field by a Whig father, and redeeming his clod's life by a martyr's death. One of the most popular of modern Scotch novelists has laboured assiduouslgy in many romances to complete the vulgarisation of the hoyden heroine; here, in Many Ogilvie, one finds that much-abused type treated so as to reveal in the most winning fashion the noble womanly qualities that may be, and so often are, temporarily obscured by an exuberant manner. The excellence of the portraiture is not confined to the invented characters; the historical personages introduced are portrayed with skill and charm. In fine, for a lively and unaffected presentment of the spirit of the '45, in its strength and its weakness, its madness and its misery, we have read nothing by any living novelist to compare with the vivid and fascinating narrative of Mr. McAuley.
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