TIM.*
Tim is undoubtedly a masterpiece in its way. The story reminds us, by way of contrast, it is true, rather than of resemblance, of a book which readers learned in this class of literature will remember, Miss Florence Montgomery's Mis- understood. The hero of Misunderstood was a high-spirited young person who intended to be all that was right in the way of obedience and goodness generally, but had a lamentable habit of forgetfulness that led him into all kinds of com- promising scrapes. Tim, on the other hand, is a delicate little fellow who never dreams of getting into mischief. But he, too, suffers from the blindness and perversity of his elders. His father, who has been making his fortune in India, has formed in his own mind an ideal picture of his absent child. He fancies him handsome, vigorous, high-spirited, all that an English boy should be. He comes home to find him weakly and timid, with eccentric likings quite remote from the healthy tastes of boyhood. And, unluckily, on his first coming, he sees him in company with a young neighbour and friend who possesses in perfection all the qualities which he has vainly imagined in his son ; and, what is worse, he takes the one for the other. He greets Carol as if he were Tim. The blunder, of course, adds fresh bitterness to his disappointment, and brings the first great sorrow, the beginning of many like sorrows in the future, in the little fellow's life. Carol is Tim's idol, the object of an admiring, passionate friendship such as only the young are capable of—friendship, in the old sense of the word, having passed out of mature life—and Carol is the object of an unreasoning jealousy and aversion on the part of the father. In process of time, the younger boy follows his older friend to Eton. Here a second disappointment awaits him. He is in the fourth form, a " song ;" Carol is on a sublime pinnacle, somewhere far out of his reach, in the Upper School. Friendship between them is as much out of the question as between a Peer and a ploughman,—nay, far more so, as the social distinctions of school-life are more rigid and impassable than those of the larger world. Carol, it is true, is anxious to do his duty. He puts the case to a friend. " What is one to do," he asked of his chief friend and crony, Villidge minor, as they strolled together arm-in-arm towards chapel, " with a small boy in one's own house, that one knows at home ?" "If it's a riddle, I give it up; if not, I should say, kick him," answered Villidge, cheerfully. Carol does not kick him, throws him, on the contrary, a kindly word now and then, and gives him a few minutes' happiness by taking him as one of his fags. The Eton scenes are as excellent as the rest of the book, and a great deal more cheerful. The talk of the boys is doubtless a little more epigrammatic than the conversation of Etonians commonly is ; but it is not idealised more than is necessary (the reality might be a little Zolaesque), and the general impression is doubtless faithful to truth. " Tommy," a young gentleman of the " Timothy East" kind, is especially admirable. Time goes on, and a final blow falls upon the poor little friend. His hero falls in love ! Miss Viol& is well enough, but she can be cross at times ; and domestic vexations having soared her temper on a certain occasion, she upbraids her lover with letting his friend come between them, and poor Tim overhears the reproach ! His mind is made up ; he renounces the friendship which makes up so much of his life, rather than stand in the
• Tim. London: Macmillan and Co. 1891. way of Carol's happiness. We need not follow the story any further. Every reader will guess the end.
We have called the story a masterpiece, and so it is, both in its humour and its pathos. The last scene is, to our thinking. unsurpassed in its way. But, we ask, for what readers is it meant? Pat it in the way of a self-contained, hard, jealous man, such as was Tim's father, and it is barely possible that it might do him good—that is, if any book could—and this we are inclined to doubt. Grown-up people, if they have any taste, will admire it for its literary merit. But the really appreciative reader will be found in some sensitive, precocious child, who may actually be, or, much more probably, may fancy himself to be in the same circumstances as was poor little Tim. And to such a reader it can hardly do anything but unmixed harm. Let authors try their pathos on world-worn hearts, though it is not impossible that even these may be yet further hardened by sentimental sorrows ; but let them spare the young. Most of these, it is true, are quite beyond the reach of sentiment, but with a few it is only a too potent influence.
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