FOUR WOMEN'S NOVELS.* lsr the literature of fiction it is
the deuxibme pas rather than the premier pas that is really critical. An impressive first novel may testify to a store of inherent power which can always be drawn upon, in which case a second work may be finer than the first, and a third than the second, because natural energy is reinforced by acquired experience. On the other hand, it may be either the result of an exceptional creative impulse—what we call an inspiration—which comes and goes, and does not come again, or the presentation of a vividly realised personal experience by a writer who cannot invent, but only imaginatively recall ; and in this case the exhaustion of the treasury of memory means exhaustion of productive power. Now, Miss Dougall's Beggars All was a really striking achievement; fresh—almost startlingly fresh —in conception ; strong—almost rudely strong—in dramatic presentation; a book with a weight of substance and a vitality of style which seemed to have behind them both intellectual force and imaginative opulence. The question, "What next? " was of more than usual interest ; and now that the next has come, we arc bound to admit that, although it contains much good work and many true and beautiful thoughts, What Necessity Knows is, at any rate as a pure story, somewhat disappointing. Its predecessor had a strong, picturesque opening, and the interest at once excited never flagged for a moment. The new book opens flatly, and when we reach the end of the first volume the action has yet to begin. It would almost seem as if the author were not cer- tain of her grip, and were holding back until she could feel that it was firm,—a proceeding which to the reader is naturally wearisome. When Miss Dougall has really got the grip, things begin to be brisker, but we are well on into the third volume before we see which way the movement is tending. The real motive of the book is spiritual,—the emancipation of three souls from the weakness that fetters them ; of Robert Tren- holm° from his worldliness, of Sissy Cameron from her hard- ness, of Sophia Rexford from her pride ; and Miss Dougall's conception and workmanship in the dramatic crises of her dtory are excellent. And indeed it must be said emphati- cally that, with all its faults, What Necessity Knows is much richer in intellectual and moral interest than many a novel of commonplace faultlessness. The sketch of the Rev, Principal Trenholme is a singularly and subtly truthful study of an essen- tially noble nature that is marred, and in a measure, even vul- garised, by the presence of a thin streak of something that would be pardonable in a lower human character, but is not pardonable in him. It is not every writer who could find the suggestion of an impressive moral crisis in a man's concealment of the fact that his father was a butcher; but it is from such apparent trivialities that the crises of actual life often arise, and Miss Dougall, like Mr. George MacDonald, has the power of showing these trivialities as the significant things which they really are. His younger brother Alec is not less good. He seems almost as irrationally uncompromising as Ibsen's Brand ; but it is his very inflexibility which brings .about Robert's redemption from his lower self. What Necessity Knows is a Canadian story, and Miss Dougall makes a fine picturesque and dramatic episode of the midnight ascent of a mountain by Home enthusiastic believers in the second Advent, who expect to be caught up from its summit to meet the re- turning Christ. Nor is it used merely as an episode, but as
* (1.) What Necessity Knows. By L. Dongall. 8 vols. London: Long/mans, Orson, and 0o.—(2.) Margaret Drummond, Minionairs. By Sophie F. F. Voitob, 3 vols. London Adam and Chorloo Blank.—(8.) To His own Master. By Alan Aubyn. S vols. London Matto and Windus.—(4.) Darabbas a DrOallt of
meld', Trovav. By Marie Unroll', 3 vols. London : Mellmon and On, one of the subsidiary means to Trenholme's awakening. That very ordinary young man of the world, Harkness, is talking to him :— " To toll tbe truth, if I thought the Millennium was coming to-night, I'd he real scared, though I've lived better than most .young men of my age do ; but somehow the Millennium isn't the kind of thin,' I seem to hanker after much. I suppose, though, people as good as you would like nothing so well as to see it begin at once.'—Trenholme looked clown at the sheet of paper before him and absently made marks upon it with his pen. He was thinking of the spiritual condition of a soul that had no ardent desire for the advent of its Lord, but it was not of the young man he was thinking."
Of the one defect of the book enough—perhaps too much— has been said. It is there, and some note had to be made of it ; but much worthier of note are the imagination and the insight which raise an imperfect story much above the level of ordinary fiction.
Miss Veitch's admirable novels consist largely of "scenes from [Scottish] clerical life ; " and though the figure of the young mistress of Roderick's Tower in Moyle Island catches the high light in her latest picture, the manse and its in- habitants are well in the foreground. The story tells bow Margaret Drummond came to her island inheritance and her million of money ; how, with her warm heart and clear head, she laid her plans of beneficent usefulness; how she some- times succeeded where she seemed to fail, and sometimes failed where she seemed to succeed ; how out of her most signal triumph arose her greatest trouble and perplexity ; and how, finally, with a sense of rest and relief, she gave the reins of management into hands that she felt were stronger than her own. This conclusion is the only part of the story which seems to us weak. Most novelists cut their knots by death ; Miss Veit& cuts hers by a marriage, and we feel that the union of Margaret Drummond and her loyal friend, Colonel Macdonald, " suitable " as it is, is a rather mechanical affair, which has, indeed, almost a Jack-in.the-box effect, so suddenly does it jump into the story. But then the author has at least half-a-dozen successes that must in fairness be set against this one failure. She has, for example, given us in the reptile McBurnie a thoroughly lifelike hypocrite,—a char- acter which is as rare in fiction as the incredible Pecksniff is common ; and in the voluntary, indeed joyfully, accepted death of the untameable ne'er-do.weel Jock Lindsay, we have the fine conception of a great deed of heroic loyalty, unspoiled by any of those touches of sentimental, histrionic rendering with which an inferior artist in striving to heighten the emo- tional effect would have cheapened or destroyed it. Finest of all, however, is the powerful, pathetic presentation of the long struggle in the mind of the minister, Murdoch M'Gregor, between the forces of inherited tradition, narrow prejudice, and cruel ecclesiasticism, and the finer human instincts which Margaret Drummond has awakened within him. We do not foresee the end, but in looking back from it we perceive that it has been an inevitable catastrophe to which all things have been working ; and the final breakdown of the congenitally flawed brain excites the pity and the terror of noble tragedy. There is less subtlety of portraiture in Margaret Drummond, Millionaire, than there is in Miss Dougall's story, but there is much more of narrative skill, and it is a novel of real excel- lence.
In both the preceding books there are purely literary virtues not to be found in To His Own Master, and it seems a pity that a writer in many ways so capable as Alan St. Aubyn should not rid herself of crudities and even vulgarities of style which set the teeth of the cultivated reader on edge. Of course, the slipshod phrasing of a poor book is not worth notice, because it is only part of the general poverty ; but this is not a poor book by any means, and a day or two spent in revision would have been time well employed. To His Own Master is the story of a young parson, Stephen Dash- wood, who is pursued through life by a demon of ill-luck. Some of his misfortunes are esrlainly the result of his own folly—his continuing to visit a certain objectionable Baroness, after he had discovered her character and aims, was, for example, an incredibly fatuous proceeding—but for the most part, they are the outcome of a treachery of circumstances which turns his best deeds into weapons against himself. Occasionally, as in Mary Grove's facile desertion of her loyal lover, the accumulation of misfortune violates the modesty of nature, and there is a certain look as of a wilful manufacture of misery. This criticism, however, applies only to a few of the closing chapters, and the greater part of the book is lifelike, as well as marked , by pathos and power. The story of Dashwood's relations with the Grove family, especially with the wretched Major Grove—that broken- down, maddened, and hopeless inebriate, who „has dragged three women down with him into the pit of degradation—is of course a painful one, but there is no morbid straining after the production of horrors, The facts of such a fall are horrible enough in themselves, and Alan St. Aubyn achieves her im- pressive effects by reticence rather than by elaboration. We remember few things of the kind equal in pathetic effect to the scene in which the unbearable craving asserts itself, and Dashwood, as a last resource, brings in the injured blinded wife whom, in his reckless delirium, the drunkard has struck down. Of course, the effect is transient; the author would have been guilty of sentimental unreality had she made it otherwise ; but the momentary triumph of a nobler self that is moribund, though not quite dead, is a. conception as true as it is touching. There is another strong dramatic situation later on in the book, where Dashwood breaks in upon the sacri- legious assignation of Doll Grove and her scoundrelly lover ; bat, indeed, there is nowhere any lack of vigour, and To His Own Master is certainly the best thing which its author has done.
If a high-water register is touched by the novel just noticed, there is not a less clear relapse to the lowest tide- mark in Miss Corelli's Barabbas. We are sorry that such a book should have been written by any one ; we are especially sorry that it should bear upon its title-page the name of a. writer, who, though not guiltless of previous offences against good feeling and good taste, has certainly produced some beautiful imaginative work. We have never regarded with favour the bad fashion—originally set, we believe, by an American author—of using the Gospels as material for sentimental or melodramatic romance ; but we do not think it has ever been made quite so objectionable as it is in the three volumes of what Miss Corelli calls "A Dream of the World's Tragedy." From this sub-title and from other internal evidence which we see no reason to distrust, we infer that Miss Corelli is a believer not merely in the external truth, but in the sacred significance of the narrative she has so maltreated ; and if the inference be correct, the theatrical episodes and the sickening details which she has invented to deface it are all the more incomprehensible and inexcusable. We regret the necessity for such plain speaking; but it seems to us both a necessity and a duty.
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