The Spoils of Victory. By B. Paul Neuman. (John Murray.
6s.)—Mr. Neuman obviously intends his roman a clef to be judged as fiction pure and simple, and not as fiction founded on fact. He has transported his hero from France to England and brought him into the present day, and therefore it will be fairer to judge the book purely as a novel than as a mixture of truth and fiction. The author kindly communicates the key to his literary riddle in the motto which he gives on the title-page, so that the reader need have no tiresome period of doubt as to what great master of fiction the hero is intended to represent. Regarded, however, purely as an English romance of the period, The Spoils of Victory must be pronounced a most satisfactory presentation of a meteoric literary career. The character of Champlain, the English Balzac, has gained instead of lost by being founded on fact, and stands out with extraordinary vivid- ness and conviction from the rest of the story. It is difficult to write of anything but the hero, who completely dominates the book; but Mr. Neuman is also very successful in the sketch of Mrs. Champlain, the mother, and of Evelyn Beetham-Foxe, the cold-blooded, hard woman who is the inspiration, and afterwards the despair, of the unfortunate hero. The book is extremely clever as a character-study ; but ever so slight an adherence to facts always spoils the artistic qualities of the plot of a novel, and The Spoils of Victory is no exception to this rule. It is not enough to say that the story is worth reading. As a study of character it deserves much higher praise than this, though the ordinary novel-reader who reads merely for distraction will not find it very sympathetic.
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