TWO VOLUMES OF SHORT STORIES.*

BOTH these volumes are powerful in their way. Mr. Baring- Gould, indeed, is always worth reading, and Mrs. Henniker has a considerable literary faculty of her own which she has

reinforced in the last of her stories by the help of that great, but in these latter days very unhealthy, pessimist, Mr. Thomas Hardy.

Of Mr. Baring-Gould's idylls of Dartmoor it is not easy to speak too favourably. All of them reflect the wild scenery and rather uncouth and rugged solitudes of Dartmoor with

singular effectiveness, but very few of them are really stories, though the first and longest is a story in the true sense.

Some of the others are hardly even idylls in the sense of displaying any ideal unity at all beyond that of a study of character by a man of fine insight. Mr. Baring-Gould would have come nearer the mark if he had called his volume "Idylls and Sketches of Dartmoor Life." Some of them are idylls and some mere sketches,—rough studies of a single figure, without any unity either of narrative or of poetic feeling. Dartmoor is the only connecting thread of the book. All the interests and all the sketches it contains are in essential harmony with the rugged, and not unfrequently ragged and forlorn, impressions which Dartmoor's desolate and yet fascinating scenery produces on the mind. There is rude power almost everywhere, but a good deal of wasted power too, of half-moulded strength, of misshapen self-will, of mute and half intelligent patience, of almost brute pertinacity, of an almost anti-social independence. In reading this book one thinks of Wordaworth's sketch of Peter Bell, the Potter :—

" There was a hardness in his cheek

There was a hardness in his eye As if the man had fixed his face In many a solitary place Against the wind and open sky."

But in the Dartmoor figures there is little of Peter Bell's insensibility. The strangely topped tors and the wild Druidic stones which may be seen there, have lent a quaint sense of wonder and wistful originality to the solitary wanderers' musings which in Peter Bell's case were merely covetous and selfish.

Far the best idyll in this book is the story of the great bliz-

zard of March 9th, 1891,—the story of which John and Joan are the quaint hero and heroine. The story opens with the • (I.) Dartmoor Idylls. By B. Banna-Gould. London Methuen and Co.— (2.) In Scarlet and Grey. By Florence Henniker. London : John Lace.

epitaph which the old couple are devising for themselves before the blizzard takes place, and this we will give in Mr. Baring-Gould's own graphic narrative :—

"But, although John and Joan are not able to read, and like- wise unable to write, they are the joint authors of a literary pro- duction which will outlast our century, and that also is more than most authors can say in these days of ephemeral publications. This production was written at the dictation of John and Joan. It was not impressed on paper with printers' ink, but was in- scribed on a slate slab with a graving-tool. This work was com- posed and engraved some ten years ago, and, although in 1891 it was slightly added to, it has not been completed and published yet. Its completion and publication are dependent on a contin- gency which has, happily, not yet taken place. In a word, this literary achievement—the result of the intellectual efforts of John and Joan—is their tombstone, which is preserved in their cottage, and is there conned daily by them. Neither knows the letters of the alphabet, yet both can read what is written on the headstone, for they know what the lines and curves and dots are intended to represent. In March, 1891, the monumental inscription stood thus :—

SACRED TO THE MEMORY

OF JOHN AND JO&N NOBLE,

Who were born the same day, Baptised the same day, Confirmed the same day, Entered service the same day, Were married the same day, And became parents simultaneous. They died

'They were lovely and pleasant in their livea, and in death they were not divided.'-2 Rim

The cutter of the headstone= monumental engraver' he entitled himself—had some difficulty with John and Joan over his work. They were ungrammatical. They were unreasonable. As in- stance of ungrammaticality they desired to have the sentence

run, Who was born the same day,' &c. Was," ' observed the sculptor, is unusual, to put it mildly ; to put it strongly, is wrong. "Was" is singular.'—' But our story is both coorious and singular.'—` You are two individuals, separate personalities, and, therefore, must be spoken of with a were. We are one,' said John, Scriptur saith so. They two is one flesh. You can't go against Scriptur, Mr. Tomkins.' — But you were not married when you were born, so must be spoken of in the plural then.'—' There's argiment in that,' said John, rubbing, his head. What do'y say to that, Joan ? Shall we pass it? Anyhow, we was lovers from the cradle ; and set down, Mr. Tomkins, as we was inoccnlated together.'—` You surely are not

going to have that inscribed ? Why not? It's a terrible coorious story. Yes, Joan and me was inocculated together. It was in a drawer of an old cheffonier with brass mountings. And it wasn't small-pox at all : it turned out to be chicken-pox with both of us : that was coorious.' To understand this statement it is necessary to know what the term 'inoculation' meant among the peasantry of the West of England till vaccination became compulsory. When a child had small-pox, another child was put into the crib with it, and kept there till infected with the dis- order. If the crib were too small to accommodate two infants, then a lower drawer of a chest was taken and converted into a temporary bed with blankets and pillows, and the children were placed therein. That was inoculation.' There is hardly an old man or old woman in the West who was not thus inoculated in infancy. You are surely not going to have this on your monu- ment ! ' again deprecated the sculptor.—' Why not? It's fack. But, though 'twas chicken-pox, Joan and me got pitted, each at the top-end of our noses. You may look and convince yourself."

But the inoculation did not get into the epitaph ; the "monu- mental engraver" obtained its suppression. The story of Joan's adventures in the blizzard, and of John's miseries while nursing his grandchild in her absence, is told with admirable force and faithfulness, and it is difficult to say whether it brings Dartmoor itself, or the couple whose minds had been moulded by the life on Dartmoor, the more forcibly before the reader. Equally skilful are the pictures of Daniel Jacobs, the poor, dreamy violinist, whose excuse for intemperance ana fecklessness is that he had been forced by his father's obstinacy in refusing him the chance of giving his life to music, into a kind of work for which he was not fit and could not throw his heart ;—of the poor old ladies at " Snaily House,' who had been driven by poverty into eating salted slugs, and enjoying them ;—of the huge but almost idiotic achievement of Ephraim Weekes, who trusted so implicitly a treacherou& master that he killed himself by fulfilling to the letter an all but impossible task, in order to win a wife, whom her father refused him at the completion of his task ;— of the quarrels of the Hammetts, and the ultimate com- plete subjugation of the husband ;—and of the picture of bashful love in "Green Rushes, 0!" and the victory of a happy chance over that supreme bashfulness. Others of the sketches are rather too vague for good effect. But the ludicrous story of the attempt of a Puritan Minister of Tavistock to destroy an old cross in the neighbourhood which he thought idolatrous, and how it ended by his taking refuge on it from the attack of a furious bull, and exhibiting him- self to his parishioners in the semblance of a black demon with the appearance of a tail, is told with much humour, and perhaps not very much exaggeration. Through every story there breathes, as we have said, the keen, desolate, wild, wilful, moral atmosphere of the widely scattered villages on Dartmoor, where the peasantry are almost as much divided as they are drawn together, by the scenery in the middle of which they live, so that solitariness seems to permeate the society, while the society often almost intensifies the solitude.

Mrs. Henniker's volume shows a good deal of power, and the first two stories a good deal of pathos, but why does

she choose so often extremely unpleasant subjects ? She

gives her volume the title In Scarlet and Grey, but unless she means to use the word scarlet in Isaiah's

sense when he says, "Though your sins be scarlet they shall be white as snow," the reader will think them very much more grey than scarlet, at least in their depressing effect on the reader's mind. The last story, "The Spectre of the Real," in which she has accepted the co-operation of Mr. Thomas Hardy, is undoubtedly very effective and indeed gruesome, but also superfluously repulsive. We do not see why our modern writers of fiction should vie with each other and with Ibsen in choosing the kind of subjects which almost tempt one to think that the imagination can beat the passions in multiplying the horrors of life. There are three rather pathetic stories, the first two and the last but one, in which there is no attempt to analyse unwholesome situations, but in three out of the seven the interest is certainly extremely morbid, and in the fourth, "A Successful Intrusion," the whole skill of the writer is devoted to showing how a gay scoundrel can make fools of a set of respectable Philistines.

With Mrs. Henniker's unquestionable power, she surely might have contrived to give us a little more insight into strong and healthy and innocent characters. There is only one "A Page from a Vicar's History," in which a character intended to be of the higher kind is made the centre of the interest, and there the sketch of him is so vague, and the figures to which he is made the foil are so weak and frail, that the story, as a story, is quite a failure. Perhaps the most touching story in the book, and that which shows most skill in the delineation of character, is "Bad and Worthless," its object being to show how much good may remain in a character devoid of self-control, and how much gross and greedy selfishness may pervade characters which stand well with the world. That lesson is good, and one which we cannot easily ponder too often, but we think that Mrs.

Henniker shows herself too much disposed to insist on the distribution of good hearts to weak wills, and of selfish hearts to decent exteriors. After describing with much power how a dying drunkard took off his own clothes to protect a wailing infant from the snow, and died from the exposure, she con- cludes with this scene from the household in which he bad been refused help :—

" Dear, dear, a severe wreck on the Yorkshire coast ! Shocking, David, is it not, to think of all those poor creatures hurled into

eternity at a moment's notice! Yes, and doubtless many totally unprepared to go !' remarked Mrs. Groser, placidly, spearing a sausage with her fork.—' Ah ! truly a terrible thought ! ' remarked the Rev. David with his mouth full. 'Our naval and military men lead, I fear, not unfrequently sadly reckless and immoral lives!— ' But they have so often such good hearts, and people do all they can to put temptations in their way !' Madge said, speaking very quickly and shyly. The Rev. David looked at her with pity and disapproval. He mentally divided the world with a hard equatorial line into two hemispheres, one thickly populated with an abundance of goats, the other sparsely, containing but a few sheep. He was not yet quite decided in mind to which section Madge belonged. He feared that it might be the former, but as he rather disliked her, his uncertainty predominated over his grief at the possibility. 'Ha!' said the General, spreading out his newspaper, and tapping it. Ha! How right I was, if this is the same fellow ! ' He read aloud= Among other casualties resulting from the severe snowstorm, besides the many disastrous ones already related, we may record the discovery by some

soldiers from Fort of the dead body of a man, pre- sumably formerly in the army, which was found embedded in the drifts, not a mile from the above-mentioned fort. Life had been extinct some hours, and it is supposed that the unfortunate deceased had pawned most of his garments for drink, as he was found in a semi-nude condition. He had doubtless fallen down in a heavy stupor, owing to the influence of alcohol, and met his death in the melancholy manner described.'—'I've a presenti- ment,' continued the General, triumphantly, that this will prove to be the sar.ie scoundrel who came to my back door ! For he took the road leading up towards the Fort, you remember ? Pawned his clothes for drink ! What a deplorable and disgusting end !'— ' But if—,' began Madge.--• My dear,' said Mrs. Groser, 'Do not, I beg of you, argue with your uncle ! He must be the best judge. He shows great insight into character by turning away the undeserving.'—' Exactly ! ' and the General rubbed his hands.

They take the bread out of the mouths of honest people.'—' ! ' sighed the Rev. David. They are fit neither for the land, nor for the dunghill, so men cast them out.' He was so pleased with this quotation that he repeated it twice over. Madge pushed back her chair, and went over to the window. Through a mist that overspread her eyes she saw the melting snow, the ragged red blossoms, the hungry birds. The sun was quite bright now, shining upon a glittering sea, and the giant outlines of the ship that had been unable as yet to leave her harbour owing to the great gale. Cheerful people came out of their houses, hurried down the asphalt walk towards the town ; and the sound of a dis- tant military band tell upon Madge's ear. She thought the while of the starving, shrunken man at the back gate, and pic- tured him lying dead and lonely up on the far white hills. The General rose from his chair, walked to the fire, and stretched his hands cheerfully over the blaze. Then he rane; the bell. The browbeaten maid responded to his summons. ' We are ready for prayers,' said he."

That is vigorous enough. But could not Mrs. Henniker give us a little less satire, and a little more insight into a higher class of minds ? Mr. Thomas Hardy, in his later phases, is hardly a judicious literary counsellor.