Children of To - morrow. By William Sharp. (Chatto and Windus.) —It
is to be regretted that Mr. Sharp, who is a writer both in prose and verse of considerable versatility and of promising but undisciplined vigour, should, apparently because he has attached himself to the " Marriage a Failure "school of fiction, have written this book, which, to tell the truth, contains a great deal of sad and turgid nonsense, and the object of which apparently is to lay down the doctrine that if a Jewess loves a Christian, she had better —having an eye to her subsequent degradation in Israel—become his mistress than his wife. But if Mr. Sharp had had a grain of humour in his composition, he would have spared his readers not a few both of his personages and of his incidents,—the mad fiddler, Acosta; the preposterous attempts of the villain, Ford, to murder his rival, Felix ; and the fearful and wonderful storms. It is truly appalling to be treated to page after page of "resilient*" and " BUBMT1113," and "the sweet, radiant, wondrous Garden of To-day that lies amidst the abysses of the soundless and viewless Dark." Mr. Sharp should go through a course of Macaulay and Sydney Smith—and perhaps of the Shorter Catechism as well— before he writes another line of Action.
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