True as Steel. By Walter Thornbury. Three vols. (Hurst and
Blackett).—That prolific writer, Mr. Walter Thombnry, after having tried his hand at several different branches of literary composition, has at length produced an historical novel. The central figure of the book is the Ritter Gortz von Berlichingen, the Knight of the Iron Hand, whose name Mr. Thornbury has, for no perceptible reason, thought fit to simplify into "Berehlingen ;" and its materials are principally supplied by the autobiography of that renowned warrior. Mr. Thornbury appears to have relied for success not at all upon the skilful construction of his story, nor upon nice delineation of character, but solely upon the des- cription of stirring events ; and, as he possesses a certain faculty of picturesque writing, he has succeeded in putting together what appears to us to be the most readable work of fiction that he has hitherto pro- duced. Speaking absolutely, however, we can scarcely regard the book as a complete success. Those readers who are familiar with Mr. Thorn- bury's habit of lively illustration will be prepared to believe that the "principle" which he declares himself to have adopted "of exemplify- ing every feature of the age of which he writes by modern examples," leads occasionally in his hands to somewhat questionable results. Neither do we approve of another "principle" to which our author has adhered with great consistency throughout the whole of his book—that of fathering his own reflections on things in general upon a (presum- ably) fictitious individual, introduced as "the profound Turrisremattts, a philosopher of Augsburg, in the early part of the sixteenth century." The experiment is one the success of which is not quite beyond question, even in the hands of Mr. Carlyle himself ; and there can be no sort of doubt that it is not at all within the scope of Mr. Thombury's powers.
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