TWO NOVELS.*
HUMANITY has a faculty prompting it instinctively to criticise the behaviour of its neighbours, and say whether they acted rightly or not in any trying situation, which in real life is held in check by a sense of having no business to judge, and of not knowing all the ins and outs of the affair. But as, where fiction is concerned, there is no such restraint, one of the attractions of a good novel whose characters speak and move (as Mrs. Oliphant's always do) like living beings, is the oppor- tunity it gives for the exercise of the aforesaid critical faculty. And in The Marriage of Elinor, this opportunity is certainly afforded by the conduct of the wilful heroine, with her mag- nificent disregard for the opinion of any one but herself. Ought she to have stayed with her good-for-nothing husband, or was the bringing-up of their child in a wholesome atmo- sphere sufficient reason for leaving him ? Ought she to have told the boy of his father's existence? Ought she to have left her guilty husband to his deserts, or was she justified in saving him by evidence that was verbally true whilst actually false,—that is to say, by swearing to his having arrived on the 6th by the calendar, although she knew the calendar on that particular day to have marked the wrong date ? (Regarding this last, by-the-bye, the im- possibility of exculpating the real criminal without thereby inculpating an unjustly accused man, seems to have been lost sight of strangely, and we think we ought to have been told what was the issue of the trial for poor innocent Brown.) All these are matters as to which there is a good deal to be said on both sides of the question; and at any rate, whatever may be the verdict of readers, the author herself does not seem to have quite approved of her heroine's actions, seeing that she speaks of her as having "driven on ever wilful all through, escaping from every pang she could avoid, and throwing off every yoke she did not choose to bear." For a girl with Elinor's tendency to rush into dangerous experiments and decline to take the consequences if they failed, control of some kind was highly desirable; and that article could unfortunately not be sup- plied either by the gentle, anxious, un-self-asserting mother, nor yet by the faithful cousin John who is the other home authority. Consequently, she insists on marrying the dis- Honourable Phil—a scamp whose charm must have consisted, we suppose, in his utter unlikeness to the orderly, respectable, decent set of people amongst whom she had previously lived, for there is neither refinement, culture, nor redeeming point of any sort about him to explain her infatuation— and then naturally has to pay the penalty of her rashness. Cousin John, endowed with a sort of cold-blooded, judicial temper of mind fitting him better for giving good advice —which, by-the-way, is never taken—than for feeling the tender passion, and though unable to wish to marry any woman but one, yet seeming to derive, on the whole, quite as much happiness from a pseudo-fraternal relationship with her as he could have done from a closer bond, is a capital picture of a man neither in love nor yet not in love. Lady Mariamne, with her dogs, affectations, and " smart " bad manners, is sketched amusingly, especially when appearing side-by-side with her severelyfin-de-siecie daughter. The Rector's prompt • (1) The Marriage of Elinor. By Mrs. Oliphant. London : Macmillan and .00.--(2.) A Masperaler, By Algernon Gluing. London: Hurst and Blaekett.
change from nervous anxiety to complacency on the score of his plated wedding-present, when he discovers that the great lady's present also is plated, is one of those touches of subtle, humorous observation which one always expects from Mrs. Oliphant's pen, and which are not wanting in other places besides; and altogether, though the work is not to be ranked with her best, yet her admirers (amongst whom we claim to be included) will think it, nevertheless, quite good enough to justify their allegiance to her. A comparison between an old favourite and a new one is often interesting; and if in the present case such comparison is instituted between her and another novelist who is like her in having ranch true insight into human nature and capacity for appreciating therein what meets neither ear nor eye—we mean Mr. Rudyard Kipling- a striking contrast in their methods of working is apparent. His effects seem dashed in by swift., sharp, abrupt strokes, whereas hers give the idea of being produced gradually by repeated touches from a brush that lingers sometimes, perhaps, a little longer than is absolutely necessary.
There is boldness and originality in the conception of A Masquerader, which takes its title from a.female Bohemian who says truly: "The sole motive and essence of my being is histrionic." Having tried the stage, she found it too tame, and deemed the boards "pitifully narrow," because she required the pungency of actuality to give zest to her calling, and needed to be her part in the actual world in order to make life at all tolerable; and as, in addition to her histrionic propensity, and dissatisfaction with the ordinary means of gratifying it, she possesses also "worldly affluence, combined with an insatiable craving for cosmopolitan experiences, and exceptional opportunities for indulging it," she is altogether so far out of the common that a story wherein the title-role is assigned to her seems promising, and has, on the face of it, great possibilities. Unfortunately, however, the execution in Mr. Gissing's work is not equal to the idea ; and the strength apparent in the latter is no longer so in the former. The only person we really care to know about (the one mentioned above) is kept too much in the background by other and uninteresting individuals; whilst at the same time what is revealed con- cerning her, causes the disappointment one cannot help feeling at not having seen more, to be mingled with doubts as to whether the gratification of one's curiosity would have been desirable, and the study of life and character afforded by her history either agreeable or profitable. That is an unsatisfac- tory effect to produce, and the novel which produces it, can- not be said to be stamped with the hall-mark indicating true success. The author's obviously genuine and artistic percep- tion of the charms of Nature is praiseworthy; but we doubt whether he is wise to display it quite so lavishly as he does. We should advise him in any future work to bear in mind that descriptions of scenery, however good, cannot make up for want of plot, or for people who are, as a rule, tiresome ; and that a large proportion of readers regard much word- painting as being, necessarily and of itself, a flaw in a work of fiction.
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