Geraldine Maynard ; or, the Abduction. A Tale of the
Days of Shakes- ' peare. By Captain Curling. 8 vols. (Charles J. Skeet.)—One would always desire to speak favourably of a posthumous publication, and if Captain Curling has failed he has failed where it is no disgrace. A his- torical novel in which Shakespeare is the principal character, and Queen Elizabeth, Doctor Dee, Lord Leicester, Lord Southampton, Sidney, and Raleigh, all come on the stage would have taxed the powers of Sir Walter Scott himself. Geraldine Maynard is the offspring of a certain officer by a lady of the Geraldine family. He falls a victim to the anger of the lady's family, and she is brought up by her uncle, Ralph Maynard the miller. Shakespeare is half killed by robbers, brought to the mill, and nursed by Geraldine, who falls in love with him ; while on the other hand one Rookwood, a papist, falsely accused of tree- son by Lord Le icester,is sheltered at the mill through Geraldine's influence, and falls in love with her. She is then " abducted" by Lord Rich, and after a series of the wildest adventufes, including a shipwreck and duels innumerable, Lord Rich is finally choked off by Shakespeare and Rookwood. On the accession of James I. Rookwood is righted and proposes to Geraldine, who refuses him. This is not a very satisfactory story, but it obviously clears up the mystery about the person to whom the sonnets were addressed, and affords a field for an immense amount of quotation. The diction is of course very Elizabethan. Everybody thou's everybody else, and says, "By my fay," and "By my hali- dome ;" while such phrases as "Done wrong, qnotha," and "Ford Heaven, but this is a rare fellow," are thick as plums in a Christmas pudding. Truth will not allow us to say that there is anything else very Elizabethan about it
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