When Fortune Frowns. By Katharine Lee. (Horace Cox.)— This novel
is a web composed of threads supplied partly by his- tory and partly by imagination, which are woven together so dexterously that it is not always easy to distinguish between what is fact and what is fiction in the work. It relates in auto- biographical form the life and adventures of Gilbert Coswarth, a Cornish Jacobite gentleman who left home and family to join the rising in favour of the Chevalier in 1745, and in the person of Coswarth's daughter is represented the young lady betrothed to James Dawson, whose tragic fate is sung in Shenstone's lines beginning, "Come listen to my mournful tale." The story is cleverly told and interesting, with likeable and well-drawn characters, and we should have rejoiced if fidelity to historical events had admitted of the infusion of less sadness into their respective lots.
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