imre - T A LES.* PRO= fiction, as we have already
intimated more than once, is getting into a very unsatisfactory state, not merely with regard to the number of books written, and the frequent unfitness of their authors for the task, but for special deficiencies which they do not even think of caring to remedy. The novels of a past generation were Moitly bad enough. The pictures of life had as little of reality as might be. The persons 'lived in a queer little world of their own," and had, generally speaking, a touch of caricature, though as often of the flat as of the forcible kind. The incidents partook of the same quality, and, too generally, the execution voted upon the slip-slop. Still, the writers had so far acquired a notion of their trade as to render the story, such as it was, the principal object, and to make all the parts conduce towards that great end. Of late, writers have come to look at a story., as a mere medium for exhibiting their observations on life, their sketches of character, their repetitions of conversations, and their opinions of things in general. They take up novel-writing as they follow the fashions.
The author of Varium distinctly comes into this class. He is by no means devoid of the abilities of an essayist whether we re- fer to observation or thought. It is possible there may be in him the genius of a novelist ; for his chief characters, though slight, and in their elements belonging to the theatrical, are marked and consistent; he has formed from study a distinct idea of the manners and morals of Parisian society, just at the destruction of the old regime in the all-engulphing vortex of the Revolution, and he slightly though characteristically indicates some of its aspects. We dare say the author thinks he has produced a work of original design and dashing execution ; but a fragmentary mode of evading difficulties,_ leaping over narrative or, alluding to inci- dents, is not exactly mastering them ; the originality is rather that of a bold disregard of rules than a skilful use of them. Some social or moral lesson he evidently designs to teach, though what it is we really cannot divine. The Byronic affectation of mis- anthropy in youth, who have had no reason to mistrust mankind or despise life, is well enough ridiculed ; but this sort of juvenile folly scarcely belongs to the present day. And the mire offered by Varium is scarcely to be recommended. It is to become entangled in the toils of a Frenchwoman of fashion, such as Chesterfield knew, and adumbrated in his Letters to his son ; to believe that he the lover was truly loved even till her death by the guillotine, and then to find out that he had been the dupe of an artful co- quette, a relation of his having been entrapped in the same manner, even to the identical song which had brought about their liason.
"'And you are going tomorrow ? Well, we all must part. Shall we have one more night at the music ? (Belle had sung and played the few nights before to her guests.) I'll tell you what I will do—that which I have never done before, and probably shall never do again—sing you a song of my own invention. It is but a short time that I shall have to blush be- fore your departure. It is of a wood, a disappointed wood, whom a river fell in love with, and then left and deserted.
To woo me, to woo me, The river came to me ; All twisting and twining, and gleaming and shining, Like a serpent insidious, he came to undo me.'
"This stanza for more reasons than one, dwelt long in Alan's memory. Of the rest he can give no account ; but the reader may without difficulty imagine its conclusion ; for the river, the wood decked herself in her gayest robes ; and as she hung over him with her leafy arms outstretched the river appeared to nestle to her, as though he would ever stay. One minute —one short time—did he thus, and he was again away to other woods and pleasures.
"Belle ended the song with a great deal of feeling. Then a sort of sigh came after the last words ; and there was silence. It was getting quite dusk ; the windows were open ; whatever light there was fell all on Alan's face."
The vanity of many persons would have received a terrible shock at this discovery, and with some "the credulous hope of mutual minds" would have been dashed for ever; but on Alan Percy it has a bracing effect. He is immediately reconciled to his marriage with a lady to whom he has allowed himself to be engaged,
lreader may have guessed that occasionally the scenes and ideas go quite as far as some straightlaced English people may altogether approve of; throughout there is a worldly laxity upon some things, which, however real as matters of fact, do not exactly come up to the standard of the critical morality which fiction should enforce.
Apparently, as regards a closely treated story, Mr. Mac Donald's Phantastes, a _Fame Romance, scarcely falls under the head of fictions where the tale is a second or third-rate consideration. There is no lack of incidents and adventures, and neither descrip-
• Varian,. Published by Booth. Phantaztes ; a Fairie Romance for Men and Women. By George Mae Donald. Author of " Within and Without." Published by Smith and Elder. _Maiden Sisters. A Tale. By the Author of "Dorothy." Published by Parker and Son. tiOn nor dialogue diverts the miter iinitegefisarily'froin the had_ mess in hand. But the story itself 1eeS us in the wildest re- gions of fairie -and fancy, and thuliOme of the persons or filet. dents appear to be allegorical, yet we can rarely satisfactorily interpret them, and. sometimes not all. When a hero is trans- ported to the realms of faery, the merely natural is of course alto- gether sunk- " A new world, to Nature's laws unknown, Breaks out refulgent, with a heaven its own." There is no objection to fairies dwelling in Rowers, or to trees having their male dryads as well as female' or to metamorphoses, quite beyond the range of science, or the dreams of speculation : but the mythology should have a consistency with received opin- ions. This is h,ardly the case in Mr. Mac Donald's tale. The frame-work that carries the visitant to fairie land and occasion- ally brings him back again to the real world, is not very happily contrived.. Classical and fairy mythology too are mixed up to- gether, and these jumble creations drawn from romances of knight errantry, and German diablaie, with now and then touches from such productions as "Jack the Giant 'Killer." The objection may be only critical, but it mars the consisteney, and we think injures the didactic pinpose of the story. Beyond all question it is a cause of elongation. Pure "fairie romance" would have carried the au- thor but a little way on his adventures. Phantastes, however, is a very remarkable book. There is in it an extraordinary fertility of invention and considerable powers of fancy. The reader is carried through a fairy forest where the tiny people live and luxuriate chiefly in flowers—where the bail genii of trees, as the ash and the alder, roam about bent upon evil ; which evil the good dryads strive to counteract—enchanted palaces, grottoes, caves, with enchantresses sometimes appearing lifelike, at others encased in alabaster, are met with—a knight sent upon adventures, or doomed to encounter them, often crosses the autobiographical adventurer, and has, too, a story of his own. These and similar things form the matter of the volume, and com- pel the reader to wonder at the invention of the author, albeit the results may belong as ranch to the property-man as to the poet. A sample, however, will convey a better idea of the workmanship than any account; and one of the reaaiest is the wanderer's ad- venture in a cave, into which he has been allured by the spirit of the alder.
"'What followed I cannot clearly remember. The succeeding horror al- most obliterated it. I woke as a grey dawn stole into the cave. The dam- sel had disappeared ; but in the shrubbery at the mouth of the cave, stood a strange horrible object. It looked like an open coffin set up on one end ; only that the part for the head and neck was defined from the shoulder-part. In fact it was a rough representation of the human frame, only hollow, as if made of decaying bark torn from a tree. It had arms, which were only slightly seamed, down from the shoulder-blade by the elbow, as if the bark had healed again from the cut of a knife. But the arms moved, and the hands and fingers were tearing asunder a long silky tress of hair. The thing turned round—it had for a face and front those of my enchantress, but now of a pale greenish hue in the light of the morning, and with dead lustreless eyes. In the horror of the moment, another fear invaded me. I put my hand to my waist, and found indeed that my girdle of beech-leaves was gone. Hair again in her hands, she was tearing it fiercely. Once more, as she turned, she laughed a low laugh, but now full of scorn and Se- vision; and then she said, as if to a companion with whom she had been talking while I slept, There he is ; you can take him now.' I lay still, petrified with dismay and fear ; for I now saw another figure beside her, which, although vague and indistinct, I yet recognized but too well. It was the Ash-tree. My beauty was the Maid of the Alder ! and she was giving me' spoiled of my only availing defence, into the hands of my awful foe. The Ash bent his Gorgon-head, and entered the cave. I could not stir. He drew near me. His ghoul-eyes and his ghastly face fascinated me. He came stooping, with the hideous hand outstretched, like a beast of prey. I had given myself up to a death of unfathomable horror, when, suddenly, and just as he was on the point of seizing me, the dull, heavy blow of an axe echoed through the wood, followed by others in quick repe- tition. The Ash shuddered and groaned, withdrew the outstretched hand, retreated backwards to the mouth of the cave, then turned and disappeared amongst the trees. The other walking Death looked at me once, with a careless dislike on her beautifully moulded features ; then, heedless any more to conceal her hollow deformity, turned her frightful back and like- wise vanished amid the green obscurity without."
With the Maiden Sisters of the author of " Dorothy," we re- turn to that class of fictions where the tale is chiefly a means of displaying the opinions, Observations, and literary acquire- ments—often very considerable of the writer. Persons suggested by the life, if not drawn directly from it, continually appear ; and we make no doubt of the likeness because they are often as dis-
eeable from stiffness, insipidity, forwardness, dulness, or other
qualities, as if they were present in the flesh. Their discourse, too is evidently real ; and as they talk about matters which have little necessary connection with the story, or which sometimes are quite away from it, the dialogues are characterized by smart or elegant tediousness. The book, in reality, is frequently a species of family or social biographies that induct us into dimly illuminated "passages that lead to nothing." In Maiden Sisters a story has been engrafted upon this kind. of material, which though not very new in itself, may undoubtedly impart a kind of living interest to younger readers to whom such a tale has freshness. A colonel no longer youthful if not quite middle-aged, wins the affections of a heroine in her teens. Mis- understandings arise, a quarrel ensues, and Ellen, falling into a consumption, goes to her 'brother at the Cape to recover her health, but dies there.
Previous page
