Heronshaw ; or, Modern Thought. (3 vols.) By Quintus Lapis.
(Charing Cross Publishing Company.)—This is an exceedingly odd book. The writer has taken great pains to interest us in the personages of his story, and although the details of their appearance, manners, opinions, and other characteristics are most wearisomely overdone, it cannot be said that he (or she) wholly fails. Everybody is highly genteel ; the only unpleasant individual is a fast young squire, for whose course of life, too, it seems to us, there was more apology than the author would allow. Certainly it is given to few of us to support with equanitnity the company of such dreadful bores and button-holers as the respectable folks of this story must have been. The Marchioness and her family, the Baronet, the Baroness, the Oxford tutor, the Kentish squire (father of the gay young fellow spoken of above), one and all, never open their lips without pouring over us a flood of didactic balderdash, sufficient to make as rush from their presence, and take refuge with Rose Delane, the 011ivants, and Bedford Lindridge, the naughty people, with an intense feeling of relief. "Quintus Lapis" must regard this as the unfortunate but not uncommon result of over-much " preechee preechee."
Previous page
