CURRENT LITERATURE.
We have received the first two numbers of the Dramatic Review, a new journal of "theatrical, musical, and general criticism." The special features of this new venture are set forth in an able introductory article. They are the treatment of the Drama as an independent art,—that is to say, not in conjunction with sport, politics, or the doings of " society,"—and an adherence, in the case of all criticisms, to the principle of signed journalism. The contributions to the first number are of unequal merit. There is a slashing notice of the revival of As You Like It, by Mr. Harry Quitter, and a spirited rejoinder to Mr. Barnand, by Mr. Sydney Grundy. But in the "Notes" and paragraphs we see less advance upon those to be found in the Society papers. We are given lists of the social and artistic "notabilities" who witnessed Madame Hading's performance in Frou.Frou ; but of the performance itself, one of the most interesting witnessed by theatre-goers of this generation, not one word. And exactly one-half of a paragraph with the heading "Edinburgh" is devoted to a panegyric of Madame Patti and a list of the contents of her jewel-case. The second number contains much good writing, including some lively Society-verses.
Fast and Loose. By Arthur Griffiths. 3 vols. (Chapman and Hall.)—This is an excellently contrived story of the sensational kind, this adjective being used, it should be understood, without any kind of reproachful significance. The main subject is the robbery of a bank by one of its cashiers, and his accomplice, a swindler of quite an heroic type, who is known in society as the Marquis de Ojo Verde (we may remark in passing that the false marquis "piles it up" a little too high when he talks of his own property ; the list he gives would have excited the suspicion of the least wary). The first step in the robbery is the getting rid of the honest man, then occupying the post of chief cashier, who stands in the confederates' way. As the honest man has a beautiful daughter, and the beaatifal daughter has naturally a lover, indeed, more lovers than one, a love-story is appropriately introduced. Between adventure and love, the efforts of the swindlers (who triumph at first by getting the honest cashier found guilty of peculation) to accomplish their ends, and the efforts of the honest men to defeat them, the tale moves briskly on. The latter part is perhaps the best. In this the working of the Paris police system is capitally described ; and from this we pass to another subject in which the author seems equally at home,—the ordering of the English convict establishments. The final checkmate of the marquis (it is probably true to fact that he rang his own head into the noose at last), and his attempts to escape, are most graphically described. We will frankly say that it is quite easy to have too much of the kind of literature to which this novel belongs ; but the skill and vigour, we may add, with which it is written, are worthy of all praise.
Out West; or, from London to Salt Lake City and Back. By Colon South. (Wyman and Sons.)—The writer has not got much that is new to tell us about the States. More than a sixth part of the volume, indeed, is occupied with the oft-told tale of the voyage out. He tells us that Chicago is not so prosperous as it looks, being built to a great extent on borrowed money ; he adds another to the adverse opinions which have been expressed about the happiness and virtue of the Mormons, and makes some unfavourable remarks about the American-Irish agitators. He has a curious story to tell about drinking habits in the West. It had struck him as strange that everybody at his hotel seemed to be total abstainers, drinking only coffee or water at meals, till he found that they drank their whiskey neat early in the morning, before breakfast, by preference. He tells also some useful truths about American manners and customs in relation to railway stocks. " It is said that two hundred millions of English capital have gone over to America to pay for undertakings which have not cost our cousins anything." On the whole, Mr. Colon's praise and blame seems fairly dealt out.
Amyot Brough. By E. Vincent Briton. 2 vols. (Seeley and Co.) —This story of the eighteenth century may fairly be classed with the successful efforts that have been made from time to time to reproduce a bygone time. Amyot Brough and his sister, left orphans at an early age, after a time of somewhat troubled and dreary in. dependence, come under the care of their grandmother, an old French lady, long widowed of her English husband. Mrs. Harley, for that is her name, is a most charming picture of an old age beautified by a serene and cheerful wisdom. If the book had contained nothing else but this, it would have been a success. But it does contain other things of merit, though nothing, we think, of equal excellence. For the hero himself we cannot profess to feel much interest. Somehow we never seem to see much more than the outside of him ; and the outside the author has purposely made little attractive. But his love story is prettily told. The sweet Primrose, whom he loves steadfastly from early boyish days, who seems hopelessly separated from him by barriers domestic and political, but whom he wins in the end, is a very pleasing personage indeed. Her brightness, tenderness, and faith are indeed admirably described ; and in contrast with her is the somewhat prim figure of Amyot's sister, with her uneventful love-story. These female figures are notably the best in the book. The chief historical personage who appears in it is, as we are told by the title-page, the Conqueror of Quebec. A master-hand has been before the author in drawing Wolfe as men saw him in private life ; not to have failed when such a comparison is suggested, is no slight praise. The story of the Montmorency Heights is well told. Notice of Amyot Brough without a distinct recognition of that admirable creature, Toby, a dog who ought to have a place of honour among the dogs of fiction, would be notably incomplete.
Greater London. By E. Walford. (Cassell and Co.)—This is the second and concluding volume of a work which very few persons besides Mr. Walford would have been competent to undertake. We have here that division of " Greater London" which lies south of the Thames. We start, under the author's auspices, at Woolwich, and after visiting other riverside places, as, e.g., Plumstead and Erith, pass on to Bexley, " the Crays " (of which there are four), Chiselhurst, Addington, Croydon, Wallington, Sutton, Epsom, Esher, Kingston, Richmond, Kew, and Wimbledon (to choose a few of the more prominent out of a great catalogue of names). Mr. Walford is as readable and, we may add, as instructive as usual, and his descriptions are plentifully illustrated by nearly two hundred engravings of the places mentioned as they were and as they are.
Ralph Raeburn, and other Tales. By John Berwick Harwood. 3 vols. (Hurst and Blackett.)--Mr. Harwood's characters have a strong family resemblance. They meet with reverses, they are brave under misfortune, they acquire wealth, they marry the disinterested young women who believed in them when they were poor. They go to various lands, indeed, one to the Caspian, one to South America ; ccelum non animum mutant. They are brave, faithful, and fortunate. Virtue is always rewarded, and vice is always punished. The tales are easy and pleasant reading, not without a gentle interest, which is real, though it does not amount to anything like excitement. If we may venture on a criticism on one of them, we would suggest that the bank of "Crump and Warburton" must have been in an even smaller way of business than its principal modestly describes, if the payment of somewhat over £2,000 from the private property of the said principal could make the difference between an average dividend and paying the debts in fall.
Thomas Bewick and his Pupils. By Austin Dobson. With ninetyfive illustrations. (Chatto and Windus.)—Mr. Dobson's monograph of "the faithfullest of copyists and the most skilful of woodengravers" is at once a charming book to look at and a pleasant one to read. There is not much of novelty in the volume, which is for the most part a reprint of magazine articles ; but there is, it is almost needless to say, discriminative criticism, and the genial style which allures a reader onward from page to page. People who have not a special interest in the subject may, perhaps, find here all they care to know of Thomas Bewick. He is worth knowing if ever English artist was, not for his exquisitely truthful works alone, but for himself. In this instance the man's character is as unique as his art. His originality, his humour, his simplicity, his sincerity, visible as they are iu his designs, may be seen also in his mode of life, and there is thus a personal interest attaching to his story, which does not always belong to artists of even higher mark. Bewick's love of Nature was intense ; and Mr. Dobson dwells with justice on the microscopic truthfulness of his work, and on its great variety. He is a humorist as well as a naturalist ; and his humour saves him from monotony. His genius reached its highest point in the "Land and Water Birds." "These birds of Bewick," Mr. Dobson writes, "those especially that he had seen and studied in their sylvan haunts, are alive. They swing on boughs, they light on wayside stones, they flit rapidly through the air, they seem almost to utter their continuous or intermittent cries, they are glossy with health and freedom, they are alert, bright-eyed, watchful of the unfamiliar spectator, and ready to dart off if he so much as stir a finger. And as Bewick saw them, so we see them, with their fitting background of leaf and bough, of rock or underwood—backgrounds that are often studies in themselves." Mr. Dobson's brightly-written narrative brings the great Newcastle engraver vividly before us. His criticisms arc always interesting and suggestive ; and it is no fault of the writer if the numerous illustrations attract even more attention than his text. The beautiful volume cannot fail to be welcome in the drawing-room ; but where, indeed, would a book so richly illustrated not be welcome ? We may add that three chapters are devoted to Bewick's most distinguished pupils, to Clennell and Nisbet, to Jackson, Harvey, and Landells.
Creatures of Day. By Lady Violet Greville. 3 vols. (Chapman and Hall.)—This novel is compounded after a very common recipeThe flavour is supplied by a possible difficulty about the seventh commandment, which is kept before the reader's eyes. It does not come to anything serious ; but still it is there, and the writer who has published several novels, and may be supposed to know the tastes of people iu good society, doubtless supplies a demand. There must bo a suspicion of wrong-doing, it seems, but no more. The other materials of the tale are ordinary enough. There is an audacious girl who endeavours to secure the hero, her counterpart in humble life, a widow who lets lodgings, a modest young woman who is rewarded as she deserves to be, a jealous husband, a young man of fashion, a devoted man of letters, cum multis aliis. The chief merit of the book is the brisk and natural dialogue.
Historical Account of the Belief in Witchcraft in Scotland. By Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. (Hamilton, Adams, and Co.)—The well-known Scotch eccentric, gossip, antiquarian, and book-collector, whom the writer of a biographical notice in this volume terms "The Sir Horace Walpole of Edinburgh," edited in 1819, and from manuscript, a book dealing chiefly with witchcraft, and bearing the tilde of " Memorialls ; or, the Memorable Things that Fell Out Within this Island of Britain from 1638 to 1681," by the Rev. Robert Law, a clergyman of the Church of Scotland. Sharpe's work as editor consisted chiefly of an Introduction tracing the legends of wizardry and apparitions to the earliest periods of Scotch history. The number of books which have recently been published on superstition, folk-lore, and such subjects, have necessarily made the contents of this introduction public property. Nevertheless, from the historical point of view, Sharpe's account of Scotch witchcraft is without an equal or rival, and was, therefore, well worth publishing as an independent monograph. The style is clear, relieved by dry Scotch humour. One can hardly suppose Sharpe to have been serious when ho wrote this :—" A young man near Aberdeen, remarkable for his personal attractions, complained to the bishop of the diocese that he was infested by a spirit in the shape of a female, so fair and beautiful a thing that he never saw the like,' which would come to his chamber at night and endeavour to allure him to her embraces. The bishop wisely advised him to remove into another country, and addict himself to fasting and prayer,_ which measure had the desired effect—a thing wonderful enough considering the wicked perseverance of these spirits, as distinguished for their unwearied pursuit of their victims (ride Cazotte's Diable Amoureux '), as for their subsequent constancy." Some of the stories of the tortures inflicted on Scotch wizards and witches, and especially of the frightful lies they were compelled to tell as "confessions," make one's blood run cold even at this time of day. The strangling and burning at Edinburgh, in 1591, of " Doctor Flan," after a prolonged "torment of the bootes," form one of the blackest incidents in the history of human superstition.
The Churches of Christendom. (Macniven and Wallace, Edia. burgh.)—This volume consists of twelve lectures delivered during 1883.84 by well-known clergymen of the Church of Scotland, such as Principal Talloch ; Dr. A. K. H. Boyd, of St. Andrews ; Professor Milligan, of Aberdeen ; and Dr. Cameron Lees, of Edinburgh. Taken as a whole, the subject is as judiciously and carefully treated as it probably could well be by a number of writers working independently of each other. If no lecture displays profundity either of theological insight or of theological scholarship, none is uninteresting or carelessly written. Professor Milligan's lecture on "The Church of the Second and Third Centuries," and the Rev. John Watts's on "The Latin Church," may be mentioned as giving, in a very readable form, the results of careful research and reflection ; while Dr. Cameron Lees's on "The Greek Church" is lightened up by that personal knowledge of the subject which travel supplies. Principal Tulloch is never a dull writer ; and he has a congenial subject in "The Unity and Variety of the Churches of Christendom," with which he brings this series of lectures to a close. But we must say his lecture is more notable for bouquet_ than for body. The writer of the lecture on "The Anglican Church" is full, almost to overflowing, of faith, and hope, and charity ; but surely he is somewhat vague when be says of the Broad-Church school on this side of the Tweed that " it has differences and degrees from the most negative and hazy type of theology—if theology is a fitting word in the connection—to a theology, orthodox in its substance, but sweetened by a genial charity." All things considered, this volume is a credit to the scholarship, but a still greater credit to the Christian tolerance, of the Church of Scotland.
Dictionary of English History. Edited by Sidney J. Low, B.A., and F. S. Palling, M.A. (Cassell and Co.)—The editors have been assisted by more than twenty contributors, among whom are Messrs. Creighton, W. Hunt, Bass Mellinger, R. L. Poole, H. R. Reichel, and Thorold Rogers. They give us, therefore, excellent matter in a highly convenient form ; accounts of facts and personages occupying places of any importance in English history. Literature, too, is duly recognised. In fact, we have a most useful summary (extending, by the way, to more than eleven hundred double-columned pages) of an important branch of knowledge, supplying a thoroughly valuable book of reference.
REPRINTS AND NEW EDITIONS.—Walton' Lives :(Donne, Hooker, George Herbert, and Bishop Sanderson) are reprinted, together with notes and illustrations, and a Memoir of the author by William Dowling, all revised by Mr. A. H. Buller. (Bell and Sons.)—The volume gives this classic book in as convenient and generally desirable a form as can be desired.—We have also received a very pretty little edition of George Herbert's Temple (Parker and Co.), in which the text of the original edition—generally attributed to the year 1632—has been closely followed.—We have also to acknowledge new editions of The Life of Charles Lever, by W. J. Fitzpatrick (Ward, Lock, and Co.) ; Peasant Life in the West of England, by Francis George Heath (Sampson Low and Co.), "a new and cheaper edition " (being the fifth), and one to which is prefixed the facsimile of an interesting letter from Lord Beaconsfield to the author. The West of England peasantry have lately lost a staunch friend in Canon Girdlestone ; and the occasion is not inappropriate for recommending to public notice Mr. Heath's interesting account of them.—Manual of English Literature, by Thomas Arnold, M.A. (Longmana), "a fifth edition, revised," with many additions, but still of course admitting of further improvement. We see no notice of Calverley, incomparably the best writer of his own kind of comic verse ; and, what is more strange, none of Praed, whose vers de society surely should have won for him a place. But it is ungracious to note the casual defects without heartily acknowledging the merits of an intelligent and laborious work.—The Poems of John Keats, edited by Francis T. Palgrave (Macmillail), another added to the recent editions of this poet, and distinguished by adherence to the sound principle of recurrence to the text of the early editions, and of exclusion of inferior work which the poet is either known or may be reasonably presumed to have rejected.—Matta and its Knights, by Whitworth Porter (Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.), an abridgment of the larger work published in 1858, and reprinted last year. The reprint was in a great measure destroyed by fire, and Mr. Porter has judiciously made the new edition more popular in form.—The Looking-glass for the Mind. (Griffith, Ferran, and Co.)—" A reprint of the edition of 1792, with the Original Illustrations by Bewick," with an introduction by Charles Welsh.—The Students' Elements of Geology. By Sir Charles Lyell. "A fourth edition revised," by P. Martin Duncan, F.R.S. (John Murray.)—Dr. Duncan's name is a guarantee that this standard manual of geologic science has been duly brought up to the date of the latest disooveries.—We Have Been a-Gipsying. By George Smith, of Coalville. (T. Fisher Unwin.)—A volume which, we may venture to suggest, may give many persons an opportunity of both getting instruction and entertainment for themselves, and benefiting a genuine philanthropist.—International Policy ; Essays on the Political Relations of England. (Chapman and Hall.)—More Bits from Blinkbonny. By John Shathell. (Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier).—The Life of St. Paul. By the Rev. James Stalker, M.A. (T. and T. Clark.) Boons RECEIVED.—Outlines of Metaphysics. Lectures by Hermann Lotae, translated and edited by George T. Ladd (Ginn and Heath,
Boston, U.S.)—The Way Out, by Charles J. Bellamy (G. P. Putnam's Sons), one of the socialistic suggestions which form so large a part of the thought of the present day.—The Life of Madame de Bcmnault d' Honet, translated from the French, with a Preface by Lady Herbert (M. H. Gill and Son, Dublin). The subject of this memoir founded a philanthropic society, which took the name of "The Faithful Companions of Jesas."—From Opitz to Leasing, by Thomas Serjeant Perry (James R. Osgood, Boston, U.S.), deals with what the author calls " Pseudo-Classicism," and is a literary study of some value.—Dr. Brown contributes one of his valuable works on forestry in Forestry in the Mining Districts of the Ural Mountains (Oliver and Boyd).—The Dictionary of English Names of Plants, by William Miller (John Murray), is a work indispensable to every practical botanist.—A Bibliography, Guide, and Index to Climate, by Alexander Ramsey (S. Swan Sonnenschein and Co.), a book giving the results of much careful and laborious study.—A Popular Treatise on Medical Electricity, by Henry Woodward (Simpkin and Marshall).
— Over-Government, by W. Basil Wosfield, B.A. (Edward Stanford) Outlines of Roman Law, by William C. Morey (G. P. Putnam's Sons).
— Choice Readings from Standard and Popular Authors, compiled and arranged by R. J. Fulton and T. C. Trueblood (Ginn and Heath, Boston, 13.84—Thought-Symbolism and Grammatic Delusions, by H. Hutchinson (Regan Paul, Trench, and Co.)—Supplement to the Third Edition of Cate's Biographical Dictionary (Longmans).—The Compendious Calculator, by Daniel O'Gorman, a twenty-sixth edition (Crosby, Lockwood, and Co.)—Allegories, Discourses, 4,c., by Rev. Charles Jones (Williams and Norgate).—Bookbinding for Amateurs, by W. J. E. Crane (E. Upcott Gill).—Euclis : a Novel, by Robert A. Boit (James R. Osgood and Co., Boston, U.S.).
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