BEYOND THE SEA.S.*
MR. OSWALD ORAWFURD'S previous works, although not wanting in variety of motive, subject, and treatment, had not prepared us for a feat of the kind which he has performed in Beyond the Seas. Except in his book, "The Dramatists of the Restoration," he has hitherto dealt with actual things and modern times, with Portugal as it is, and in all its aspects, and in his novels, which are remarkable for a keen and refined satire, with social phenomena of the present day. Indications of a vein of romance in his writings are not, indeed, wanting ; there were many in his" John Dangerfield" days; but we have never looked for its development into such a mine as be has now given us to explore in the story of Lord St. Keyne. It will probably be found irresistible to compare a serious narrative in what may be called the reflected biographical style, of the date of the Battle of Worcester and after, by a defeated Royalist, with Esmond, and also to look for imitation or emulation of the great masterpiece of that order of achieve. ment. No resemblance to Esmond will, however, be traced in Mr. Crawfurd's Beyond the Seas ; he is in nowise touched by imitation or emulation. The story of Ralph, Lord St. Keyne, told in the mode of the time, with its mingled stateliness, sententiousness, and quaintness, with touches of a rather grim • Beyond the Seas being the Surprising Adventures and /nosnious Opinions of Ralph, Lord St. Bone ; told and set forth by his Cousin, Humphrey St. Hslilw. By Oswald Crawford. London: Chapman and Hall.
humour in it, bringing out the character of the narrator, passes away from England to return no more after its first eventful pages, and has only one woman in it, dimly seen until the end ; only one pure strain of love, an undertone, until it swells into the final harmony of faith, peril, courage, and constancy. There has gone to the making of this book much study, geographical, historical, political, philosophical, nautical, and military ; study of the kind that not only masters details, but seizes the spirit of time and place, study of the kind which Thackeray's wonderful pictures of the Canadian campaigns and the great An erican War of Independence in The Virginians so forcibly illustrate. The story is purely a work of imagination —(whether the characters of Lord St. Keyne and the villainous Viceroy of the King of Spain in Sicily have prototypes in history, we do not know)—bat it is set round with the illustration, ornament, atmosphere of history, in a fashion rich and pictorial, while it is neither cumbrous nor pedantic. The deliberate- ness and occasional argumentativeness of Humphrey St. Keyne's style ; his serious averment in refutation of anticipated aspersions of his veracity and accuracy ; the slight insistence upon little particulars, so convincing when not overdone ; the correctness of phrase in the military portions of the story; a fine savour of unforgotten courtliness in the judgment and the speech of the exiles ; the curious pedantry of the writer's dis- cussion of the then new lights that are now so old; the daring theories that are now obsolete, make this book tempting from the purely literary point of view. It is pleasant to read such good writing, to contemplate such fine taste, to linger, for instance, over such a description as that of Rembrandt's por- trait of Lord St. Keyne, or the portfolio of Darer's drawings which one Pirkheimer of Nuremberg displayed to the English exiles, who were mach astonished to find tulip bulbs and Rem- brandt prints of prime importance in the impoverished and war- wasted city. Here is a discerning passage about Diirer and Van Rijn; it occurs after Humphrey St. Boyne has noted his young lord's surprise that "there was little knowledge of, and no pride among the Nnremberg people in him who had raised their city to such a pinnacle in the arts :"-
Rover before were my eyes so ravished by man's handiwork, nor could I have believed that it was in the power of a man's fingers to trace out upon paper so delicately the utterance of his inner spirit, the workings of his fancy, end of a most subtle imagination ; and Lord ! how far is the German artist above Heer Rembrandt Van Rijn, not perhaps in the rendering of lights and shadows, or the curls and twists of men's hair and beards, and the curiosities of their raiment, bat how greatly does he better him in truth and dignity ; for the Dutchman, when he sets himself to paint a sacred piece, can often rise no higher than to fill his pictures with gross fat Dutch burghers, or mean fellows in dirty rage from the Jews' quarter of Amsterdam, with hungry, scoundrel faces ; but Herr Darer, having to draw the Blessed Virgin, though it be on a bit of paper not greater than the breadth of a man's hand, will limn her with such a high, pure look on her face as testifies to all beholders that she is indeed worthy to be chosen out and blessed among all women upon earth; and though she be depicted but as adjusting her Babe's dress, there is an awe and love mingled together upon her face as Christians dream, and indeed know there must be in it, but could not hope ever to see set forth in a picture."
The story, as a romance of war and adventure, leaves nothing to be desired ; it is animated, full, lofty in tone, realistic in detail, from the first disaster, when the fugitives from England fall into an ambush laid by their enemies from Salisbury and Winchester, and give them battle at Holmwood (how oddly it reads il, throughout the long travel that ultimately brings them to Sicily, and into contact with African pirates and their" oorsars," Turks, Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, other English gentlemen banished, like themselves, by the fortune of war, the Vice-Regent of the King of Spain, "having his court with no small pomp and magnificence at Palermo itself," with whom they take service ; finally, with the authorities of the Holy Inquisition, rampant in Spain and its dependencies at that epoch, and boldly defiant of the power of Rome. Amid these various experiences and crowding adventures, the strange, dreamy, valorous,poetical, chivalrous character of Lord St. Keyne develops itself with effect, and takes hold of the reader perhaps even more strongly in its restful and philosophic aspect when, in an interval of peace, and after the corsairs have been checked, he sets himself to searching after the hidden secret of Nature and the deep things of philosophy, "looking to arrive at some true conclusion and result, to obtain ascendency over the hearts and minds of men, as well as over their bodies by conquering and killing." To as, all this portion of the story is very in- teresting, but it may not find equal acceptance from readers who are eager to get on with the incidents. There is plenty in the book for all tastes ; perhaps the corsair chapters merit the most special mention, because they are so strongly lifelike and full of detail. The minuteness of the sea- fights reminds one of The Bed Rover and The Pilot, and we think we can trace to his love for Cervantes Mr. Crawfard's close study of the pirate and galley-slave age. With Lord St. Keyne a prisoner in the power of the Bey of Tunis, and his kinsman in command of the land forces of the Island of Sicily, in the absence of the captured Generalissimo, one phase of this stirring romance concludes, but only to be followed by an even more romantic phase, for it takes Humphrey among the turbaned infidels, and tells how St. Bayne was rescued and brought back to Syracuse "on the evening of the Feast of St. John the Evangelist," to the great joy of the people. A truly fascinating episode is the story of the confession and death of the Reneged° Admiral and Corsair, through whose revelation Lord St. Keyne and his cousin find the treasure which enables St. Keyne to enrich everybody all round in the splendid. fashion of immemorial romance. For our part, we cannot genuinely care for any story of adventure that has not hidden treasure in it ; and we like that treasure to consist, if possible, or impossible, of precious stones. Sindbad's Valley of Diamonds is hardly more luminously magnificent to the imagination—(are not all the diamonds in it cut and polished P)—than the treasure which the dying Reneged° describes. And then the coffer, "hardly bigger than a man could enclose in his two hands," that he wisely reserves for the very last revelation I Among all the jewel-stories, there is none more fascinating than that of the coffer, for it contained- " The wonder of all the world,—namely, the famed Amulet of Sultan Solyman the Magnificent, which is made of three chains of gold interlinked together, each chain holding in golden circlets three great Rubies of equal shape, each in a smooth, flat, translucent gem, nine in all (hat one is missing), the like of any one of which for blood-red tint and greatness the world possesses not, for they are in size of round equal to the eye-circle of a tiger or a lies; and each one bears on one side engraved a verse of the Koran, and on the other the name of the Hebrew King Solomon, whom the Moslems bold the father of all enchantments, and with his name a sign or token which no man can read; on each stone a different sign."
The collecting of these rubies, the formation of the amulet, and its fortunes, whose presence brought victory and its loss defeat to the great Emperor of the Turks, form a delightful episode in a work in which imagination and research are equally displayed. Effective use is made at the end of the story of St. Keyne's mysticism, and the only fault we have to find with the author is that he accords only a short term of happiness to Ralph and Geraldine. No doubt he would plead, like Thackeray about his Ivanhoe and Rebecca, that "these two were a solemn pair," and so were bound "to die rather early."
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