Biographs of Babylon. By George R. Sims. (Chatto and Windus.
3s. 6d.)—Mr. Sims has certainly selected an appropriate title for this collection. It is a series of short stories, the salient features of which are jotted down without any attempt at em- bellishment. They are true obviously, and some of them are of decided novelty, not a few being dreadful tragedies, so that not even the baldest narrative can deprive them of the interest which belongs to the more moving incidents of human life. Mr. Sims has evidently relied on this fact when publishing a series of skeleton plots ; but we may be allowed to regret what is after all the main feature of a story, the art of telling it. It• ceases to be literature when the human actors are passed before us like the figures of a biograph. They should form most excel- lent material for the basis of many a plot, and afford us not only some thrilling incidents, but also some absorbing problems. What should be the limits of tho filial duty of the sons of a hopelessly abandoned and drunken father who finally kills his second wife ? He declares that he will commit suicide rather than shame them by being hanged. One son is for saving him, with all the attendant scandal ; the other, whose will prevails, insists that he should be allowed to make his own fate, and the suicide is accordingly carried out. Another man, having com- mitted a murder in self-defence, actually intends to commit suicide ; the opportunity passes, but the world supposes that he has availed himself of it. Ten years elapse, and he returns to find his wife's banns published : this time he carries out his in- tention, a truly terrible resolve. Repulsive and fearful as some of these bare recitals of our human failures are, they are not repulsively told ; and on the whole, perhaps we ought to thank Mr. Sims for not having made them more dreadfully moving by adding the colours of an artist's palette to bare outlines in them- selves sufficiently heartrending and pathetic.
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