Lady Grizel. By the Hon. Lewis Wingfield. 3 vols. (Bentley.)—
This novel leaves the impression that it ought to have been more suc- cessful than it is. It is not easy to see why Mr. Wingfield has failed,, failed at least to make a story that carries the reader along with it, or to tell him, if it could be supposed that authors pay any heed to the admonitions of critic; how he may amend his fault in the future. He has studied his subject diligently, arrayed his characters in the proper costumes of the period, made them speak in suitable language, and contrived his plot sufficiently well. The characters, too, are of an in- teresting kind. The heroine represents the notorious Duchess of Kings- ton, and the stage is crowded, perhaps overcrowded, with such distin- guished personages as the elder Pitt, Wilkes, the Second and Third. Georges, the Princess Dowager of Wales and Lord Bute, Queen Char- lotte, Lady Sarah Lennox, and so on. The writer's sympathies, too, are popular, and he denounces in vigorous language the aristocratic vices of the period, and the misgovernment of which the popular commotion of George III.'s early days were the result. Perhaps the word "over- crowded " gives a hint of why a book evidently written with such care and, we may add, so much cleverness, is not better. It wants simplicity The writer does not leave himself leisure or space for producing e. striking effect. He seems bent on bringing before us every person with whom the history or even the memoirs of the time have made us familiar. It is not thus that the great historical novels have been written. One thing, indeed, Mr. Wingfield-has done, and it is, he tells us, the chief object of his writing,—he has given his readers an idea of the personality of the elder Pitt, who, indeed, deserves better than to• be known as the father of his more famous, but inferior son. Wilkes, by the way, appears older in the story than he really was.
Previous page
