BOOKS.

FAUCIT OF BALLIOL.* Ma. MEarvALE will think us captions critics. Last week we said of his play that what was wanting to make it natural was the element that might be supplied by the novel. This week,

we must say of his novel that what chiefly injures it as a novel is its obvious adaptation to the melodramatic exigencies of a

play. Not that we are going to depreciate it as a whole. It is a delightful book to read, full of humour, and spirited rattle, and strokes of true imaginative power, of buoyant satire, flashes of poetry, and snatches of a careless wisdom. But unquestionably the second part has the flavour of the foot- lights about it in a very pronounced degree, while the first, or prologue, has even more of lively digression than the most liberal of novelists usually allows himself, so that we hardly know at times whether we are reading a criticism of life lightly strung upon the thread of a story, or a story freely interspersed with excursuses of illustrative criticism. In the novel properthere should be a steady flow of narrative and a steady development of character, which is not to be found in Faucit of The narrative proceeds more by fits and starts than by continu- ous progress. The characters concentrate themselves on occa- sional scenes suited to the stage, instead of opening gradually to the reader's eyes, partly in incident and partly in conversation. The difference between the drama and the novel is really at bottom the difference between the few effective situations of life, and its continuous story. Not, of course, that the novel can give us life as it really is, life in all its detail and all its slow, microscopic growth. But the eye of the novelist seizes enough of the whole to remind us of the rest, and to interest us in the gradual unwind- ing of the skein upon his reel. On the other hand, the dramatist obliges you to leap, as it were, from one striking situation to another, and to fill up all the intervening spaces by the help of the imagination,—not an easy matter, at the best, but even harder where the characters are the secondary considerations and the plot is the first, as in the case of melodrama, than it is in the case of the drama proper, where the development of the story is made subsidiary to the development of the character, and where the reader feels that the dramatis persono3 have a real share in determining their own destinies.

Now, Faucit of Balliol is, as we have indicated, a melodrama with very lively and amusing criticisms and disquisitions inter- spersed. There is hardly any proper narrative in it, as distin- guished from melodrama. The idea of the plot is to draw the Mephistopheles of to-day, and to show how, in the words of George Eliot, " if thrown upon real life, and obliged to manage his own plots," he "would inevitably make blunders." But the Mephistopheles of real life is essentially a melodramatic conception, in which there is no possibility of tracing natural growth or development at all. Goethe in drawing Mephisto- pheles, made not so much a dramatic study of character as a poetical study of the evil side of man ; and the charm of his picture lies not in any Mephistophelian individuality, but in the unerring skill with which the most appropriate evil influence of the moment,—and the most appropriate to the particular person addressed,—receives the most trenchant-expression which the creative power of a singularly universal mind could give it. But when Mr. Merivale comes to paint a nineteenth-century figure as a Mephistopheles, he must, of course, give him a real place in society, and surround him with worldly circumstances which more or less fit his character. This is an almost im- possible task to attempt, and essentially melodramatic, by which we mean that the story is not made, and cannot be made, subsidiary to the development of such a character as that, since, strictly speaking, there is no natural character to develope. Count Lestrange, as Mr. Merivale names his evil hero, is cast in a mould not created out of human elements ; moreover, the business of the plot is not to help you to invest such a character as this with a semblance of reality, but to use it for the purpose of creating effective situations, and of collapsing magnificently in the last scene. Nor do Mr. Merivale's strictly human characters, cleverly as they talk, interest us very deeply in their change and growth. Gay Faucit, who has to act the part of a modern Faust, but who is represented as a really strong man, is rather like his prototype in this,—that he never acts a strong part, after the prologue is once over. Daisy—she is the

• Fault of Baia: a Story in Two Parts. By Herman Charles Merivale. 3 vole. London : Chapman and Hall.

fashionable equivalent for Gretchen, and really a taking pic- ture in the first part—becomes thoroughly unreal only because she is obliged by the severe requisites of the story to play a part she never would have played with a character like hers ; while all the rest of the dramatis penance are more or less cleverly conceived sketches of persons who might very well exist, but who do not take any substantial part in the action of the story, and certainly do not in the least grow or change with it. At least, if Lady Luscombe is an exception, she is an excep- tion which verifies our assertion, for we cannot say that Lady Luscombe is to our eyes a distinct character at all. She plays a very melodramatic part in one or two scenes, but she does not impress us as a living being.

The power of the work consists, to us, in the brightness of the picture of Oxford life, the vivacity of the dialogue through-- out, and the humour of the interlocutory remarks, which, how- ever, in the prologue, sometimes exceed the limits of digressions, especially when the author goes off into rather eccentric vieww of politics and a tirade (in which hardly any one will agree with him), obviously aimed at the present Govern- ment, for calmly repudiating in office all the principles they had announced in Opposition. What they are generally reproached with by their opponents is that they did reverse the policy which they had inherited, without taking enough con- sideration for the honour of the Clown and the unity of the Empire. However, whether that be so or not, Mr. Merivale has hardly judged well in intruding a rather peculiar political pre- possession of his own into the middle of a description of the career of " Satan Lestrange," as his friends call Mr. Merivale's modern Mephistopheles. Satan Lestrange, it seems, once con- templated going into Parliament, but missed his spring ; and on the strength of this, Mr. Merivale gives us his own view of the hollowness of politicians on both sides of the House, and of the dis- gust of the democracy at the exposure of that hollowness. In our opinion, never was any charge less justified, but whether justi- fiable or not, never was there a place less suited to it than that which it has found in the second volume of this tale. Never- theless, we quite admit that some of the most fascinating parts of the book are the asides to the reader, and the humorous or poetical episodes which they introduce. We could fill many columns with witty or humorous criticisms on life, like the following :- " So Septimus Fairfield's life was over, and he bad escaped the dishonour and ruin which had seemed to him so terrible, at the heavy cost of this young and vigorous life, full of the bud and sap of its richest spring. He had lived out his days in their narrow-minded span, as such men do live them ; and nobody had much to say of him for good or for evil. His interpretation of the fifth com- mandment had been like that of most elder people—all on one side. It is a deep conception of duty which gratifies the vanity of the old, and saves them trouble, and casts all the burdens on the young.. When they moralise on the point, it is impossible but to believe that they think of themselves as having married not to please themselves at all, but in order to place a possible progeny under heavy obligations in nowise mutual. The progeny are apt to think otherwise during their early years. Then they grow old in their turn, and go and do• likewise. And so the undying tradition of self is handed on agais-- to yet a generation more."

Or, again, of a lazy subaltern in the Army :— " Such men be the lotos•eaters of our day, in whose land it is- always afternoon because they never get up in the morning, though to eat with them is to nip, and their lotos is called sherry-and- bitters."

Or, to take a somewhat higher vein of reflection, what can be more truly humorous in the highest sense than the following, a. propos of the dumb self-wonder of an out-of-the-way Yorkshire village ?— " It may be doubted if the speculations of Mould.on•the-Moss ever rose consciously to this poetic vein of inquiry, or exceeded a general wonder what it was all about. That question strikes so home to many of us in altogether different forms of life. Where did I read of the actress who, in themidd le of a passionate scene upon the stage, stopped by a sudden impulse, and whispered to her companion, ' What non- sense all this is ; suppose we don't go on with it ?' The story has been quoted in depreciation of the actor's art; but surely it has a much wider moral, and is pointed equally against all the pursuits of life. For myself, Balbnn, who write this chronicle, I should be sorry to say how often during its progress the same reflection has silently obtruded itself. Does a politician never feel it in the middle of some passionate burst of patriotism about the honour of England, which, especially of late years, is always suffering the rudest shock it ever received since the Conquest in the hands of the other side ? Does the barrister never feel it during an appeal to the jury ? Perhaps not so often, because of the fees. Above all,—I ask the question with fear and trembling,—does the man of science never feel it, he that for some occult reason is presumed now•a-days to monopolise

what is called information,' and propounds amazing and uncomfort- able riddles, to be answered perhaps ' in o it next world,' in cases where the continuous circulation is admitted ? Does he never say, suppose he didn't go on with it? I am sure his readers do. Yet it is just because the mysterious batistay insists upon answering us all in the same way,—' But you must go on,' that the actors and the politicians and the scientific (or knowing) ones, all set their heads at each other, such as in their different ways they are, to keep this jaded old world wagging."

Such passages as these and the uniformly telling dialogue are the chief charms of the book, and they are not few, for Mr. Merivale is a poet as well as a humorist; and the occasional whiffs of verse, picturesque or mocking, with which he dots his story. have for WI a much greater fascination than the evolution of the modern Mephistopheles himself. If a modern Mephis- topheles happened to hear men speak of the padding of a little Peer's clothes, we hardly think he would make a set speech in

favour of padding as follows :-

"' Somebody take care of him !' called out Gosling, in the same tone; 'if he gets so excited his pads will work down. He's padded all over, you know, Clipper ; I'll take my oath of it. They brought me his coat one night by mistake ; and, by Jove, he's all

padding, Hard-Labour Don't speak disrespectfully of padding,' said a quiet and cynical voice, which now joined itself to the conver- sation, though nobody had seen the owner make his way into the room. 'It's the motive power of the age ; it's the staple of what we read and the bulk of what we eat ; it's another name for adulteration. The creed of the statesman and the oratory of the divine—padding. The backbone of Liberal progress and of Conservative reaction— padding. The mushroom millions that grow on the Stock Exchange, and sprout out in West-end palaces—padding. The calves of our servants and the hair of our wives—padding. The liberal display of the female form divine, which delights the Jemmy Goslings of the age, and constitutes the modern British drama—padding !' "

The effort of the true Mephistopheles would be not to draw attention amongst unreal people to the unrealities of the world, but rather to make them believe in those unrealities, to lean upon them, and take them for realities. It would only be the earnest man whose faith in goodness Mephistopheles would try to shake, by pointing oat the hollowness of all things. For those who were hollow, he would try to keep up the illusion of hollow- ness, lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and be con- verted, and be healed of their falsehood. Goethe's Mephis- topheles tries to shake the faith of Faust in what is good, but he fools the students in the Leipzic wine-cellar to the top of their bent with the illusions which to them had most reality, and encourages Martha in all her vulgar worldliness. Mr.

Merivale has given us a very amusing book, but he has not given us exactly what we can call an excellent novel, nor a sketch of the impersonation of modern evil that we find impressive. The most effective pictures of social life are the very graphic studies of Oxford, in the charming opening of the first volume.