The Sport of Fate. By Richard Dowling. (Tinsley Brothers.)— Mr.
Dowling is by no means a writer to be classed among the number of those whose names are writ in water. He possesses considerable power and originality, and would do good things by the aid of those two qualities, if he had good-taste in like measure. But he has not that excellent gift in proportion, and the effect of this deficiency is to be traced in all his writings. Ho has not sufficient judgment to discern, when certain ideas crowd upon his imagina- tion, which of them it would be well to reject, and which to retain. He is too fond of them all, ho is indiscriminate in regard to them, and this want of self-restraint gees far to spoil his stories. It does not quite spoil them ; they are too clever for that, but one never reads anything written by Mr. Dowling without a pro- voked sense that it might have been so very much better, if he had a little more of the critical faculty. To the three volumes of collected stories which appear.under the title, The Sport of Fate, this objection applies very distinctly; the stories are all marked by power, originality, and indifferent taste. We believe Mr. Dowling to be a writer with a future before him, and are, therefore, unwilling to confound hint with the multitude of novelists and story-writers whose productions fill up the odd corners in the book-boxes of the country-house season. There is cleverness in everything he has produced,—there is some- thing more than cleverness in a good deal of his writing ; but he has grave defects, and we do not think these stories more free from his characteristic faults than their predecessors. "The Partners of Loather Lane" is the best among the collection ; it is, indeed, re- pulsive in parts, but it is terribly true to a certain kind of low and struggling life, and it reveals remarkable powers of observation, with a forcible kind of pathos which has become very rare in modem fiction or " character " sketches.
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