St. Maur. By Adeline Sergeant. 3 vols. (Hurst and Blackett.)
—If Miss Adeline Sergeant pays us the compliment of reading our reviews of her novels, she has probably grown rather tired of our repeated expressions of disappointment ; but we can assure her that we are much more tired of the disappointments them- selves, and we shall only be too glad to announce their cessation. There are many novelists of ability greatly inferior to hers, who never disappoint us, because they always do their poor best, and we do not expect from them more than they have to give, but when Miss Sergeant, with literary half-crowns in her pocket, persists in doling out coppers, it is another affair. St. Maur is simply one of those old-fashioned melodramatic stories of villains and plottings, and concealed identities, and the like, which, when published in serial form provide a piace de resistance for the cheap weekly journals which appeal to the less cultivated classes. Miss Sergeant's latest novel may be in mere literary manner, slightly superior to the average specimen of its class, but this superiority does not extend to its general construction. The plot involves rather more than the usual number of absurdities, and the author lets some of her cats out of their respective bags much sooner than she ought.
Previous page
