A Vicar's Wife. By Evelyn Dickinson. (Methuen and Co.)— Evidently
the clergy have not yet been restored to the favour of the novelist, for the Vicar in the story of The Vicar's Wife does scant credit to his cloth. A good deal of cleverness has been expended, and we must say, wasted, on this novel, for though the book is readable, its characters possessing a certain amount of vitality, it does not seem to answer any known or imagined pur- pose which a writer could set before himself. We do not say that it is impossible for an enthusiastic girl of twenty-four, such as Lucia Wilbraham is represented, to fall in love on short acquaintance with a handsome Vicar who speaks in stilted language ; but it is improbable that such a girl, who is after- wards represented as clever, and as showing extraordinary self- restraint and some principle, should have married in this fashion. Her brother, who is also her guardian, could easily have found out Markham Fletcher's past life, and could have verified his suspicions that the Vicar had bought his living, and was alto- gether unworthy of his position ; and in real life he would have done so. The ordinary intelligent reader, and certainly the critic, does require probability to make him take an interest in such a sombre story. As it stands, we might call it the history of a madman, for before the honeymoon is over, the Vicar dis- closes a temper which is akin to madness, and till the end of the book he swears, curses, smashes the crockery and the furniture, and never shows a spark of natural affection for wife, daughter, or any other human being besides himself. We shall not disclose the plot, because there is none ; indeed, we did hope that the Vicar's conduct might be explained by a past murder or two ; but we were disappointed, so that we can but echo the speech of the Vicar's wife to her husband : "You are mad ; I have nothing more to say to all this."
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