CURRENT - LITERATURE.
Poor Zeph. By the Author of "Grandmother's Money." (F. W. Robinson.) (Hurst and Blaokett.)—We have copied the title given on the outside of this book. In appearance, the book is an ordinary three-volame novel, and it is only when one opens it and reads the title- page that one discovers it to be nothing of the sort. Poor Zeph, and Other Tales, is the legend on the title-page, and, as a mat- ter of fact, the story that comes first and gives the three-volume- novel stamp to the others extends to but 170 pages of the first volume. This kind of misleading title is not fair to the reader, and should be beneath the dignity of high-class publishers. We have no particular love for the ordinary three-volume novel, and ought, perhaps, to have felt grateful to Mr. Robinson for permitting us to escape the labour of reading one in this instance. Such, however, is the perversity of this particular reviewer, that the specious deception of the bookbinder has positively induced a reaction against the contents of the book. The short tales to which Mr. Robinson treats us may be good of their kind, but we can see little in them that warrants the author in reproducing them in any shape, least of all as a formal novel. "Poor Zeph" itself, which is put into such unhappy prominence, is by no means the best tale in the dozen, we shall say, at a venture, for there is no table of contents, and it would be too much trouble to count up the exact number. There is more power of a certain kind in the one called "The Romance of a Back Street," which is, besides, less painful in its incidents. " Zepla " drowns herself for love of one above her station who had won her heart. But we have not read the whole collection, only about two- thirds of it, and therefore cannot institute minute comparisons. Mr. Robinson is well able to give us much better work than this, if he likes to try. He writes gracefully and pleasantly, and contrives to indicate the darker shades of life without unduly revolting the mind. Still, at the best, sketches like these—reprinted, we presume, from serials, where they were, doubtless, appropriate enough—are tee much of a kin with the average artist's "pot-boilers," to be worth attention in their present form.
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