T RAN SMUT A TI 0 N. * Tills tale belongs
to a class of fictions which have appeared at inter- vals during the last five-and-twenty years. The object of the authors has always been satirical, but the subjects have varied, from the lighter follies to the graver evils of society. From Crotchet Castle to "this present time of writing," the method of treatment has been the same, and smartness of style has been applied alike to folly or to wickedness; for although some of the tales have exhibited depth of feeling or of pathos, it has mostly been covered by a garb of motley. This violation of Brown's doggerel canon for satire— "The Muse's labour then success shall crown, When Folly feels her smile, and Vice her frown"—
has somewhat diminished their effect, by seeming to throw a doubt over the earnestness of the writers ; for no mere literary clever- ness will acquire popularity without a story having a purpose and a seeming heartiness at least. Perhaps untruthfulness is really at the bottom of the want of success in the tales we speak of, compared with the ability displayed in them. The mere pass- ing folly is hardly worth the elaboration the writers expend on it. The graver matters are looked at from too narrow or partial a view. The ridicule or the moral conclusion may be correct enough so far as it goes, but it is not the large truth contained in the question. Hence, strange as the assertion may seem, this class of tales is ex- aggerated; although nothing can seem further from exaggeration than the gay, pointed, insouciant style of the writing, varied oc- casionally by quiet condensed bitterness.
Transmutation, or the Lord and the Lout, is an illustration of these remarks. One object of the tale is to throw ridicule on the claims of blood to consideration ; though the story shows that there is more in blood than the mass of people would allow. In connex- ion with this leading object, is a desire to depreciate the territorial aristocracy ; the Earl of Rycot, a conspicuous person in the story, being painted as vicious, weak in constitution from his vices, weak in mind naturally, and ignorant from idleness. Such characters may exist now, though they belong to a past age, in which indeed the story is partly laid ; but they are hardly a fair representation of any age. In the aggregate, the British Peerage are physically a fine race ; but if the fact were otherwise, no body of men could exist long as institution or as individuals if they were so weak and vicious as the pictures of Transmutation would imply. It is true that the writer does not represent Lord Rycot and his noble con- nexions as a general sample of the Peerage, but the whole narra- tive would lead the reader to that conclusion.
The "transmutation" of the title is the substitution, by a phi- lanthropic doctor, of a healthy miller's child for the puny progeny of Lord Rycot ; the great object of the accoucheur being to retain the Earl and his household on the estate. The philosophic pur- pose of the story is to trace the respective careers of the two chil- dren; the false heir being made to display the open honest elm- raeter and manly tastes of the English yeoman ; the son of the reformed or rather exhausted roué being selfish, envious, unprin- cipled, and finally coining to a bad end. The stale incident of a false accusation of murder and a trial forms the leading romance occurrence of the book.
The great merit of Transmutation is literary ; consisting in the crisp clearness with which the ideas are conceived, and in the pointed style with which they are presented. To a certain degree these ideas, too, are popular; for they echo the common notion en- tertained of noble landlords, tyrannical yet servile stewards, and a loutish brutalized peasantry. These things, however, if they exist, exist no longer in the form presented by the novelist. I man of wit and ability should draw his materials from actual life, and not, • Transmutation; or the Lord and the Lout. By N. or M. Published by Chap- man and
like the vulgar romancist, repeat the hacknied ideas of successive writers. The manner of dressing them up may indeed impart the appearance of novelty ; especially when description, not incident or action, is the subject. What can be better in its way than this picture of Rycot and its neighbourhood, its owner, its miller, and its apothecary.
" About a quarter of a mile southward of the old lichen-grown park- paling of Rycot Castle' in a damp, green, Hobbimalike district of one of the Midland counties, stood, some years ago, an oldfashioned water-mill ; of such solid construction, that the original proprietors seemed to have set at defi- ance, as insolently as the lords of Rycot or any other castle, not only the lapse of ages, but the progress of science, and animosity of their aristocratic neighbours. " Thanks to the thickets of alders and sallows that served to obscure the progress of the mill-stream along the marshy valley, the tiled roof of the little tenement, dotted over with tufts of moss and houseleck, was scarcely perceptible. Even the monotonous clack, which, overcoming the rustle of the trees and gurgle of the stream ere it reached the obstructing dam, served to reveal its existence in its immediate vicinity, like the bad name of some tyrannic village churchwarden, was unheard of at a mile's distance. Rycot Castle, moreover, and Meg's Mill, stood, the one too high, the other too low, to be even on bowing acquaintance.
" Each was independent of the other. The Earls of Rycot possessed a mill on their home-farm, which supplied their wants and those of their prin- cipal tenants; while the customers of Luke Harston the miller consisted of his smock-froeked neighbours, whose petty but prompt payments enabled him to get a scanty living, laboriously but steadily earned, as was the case with his fathers before him.
"The ups and downs of life had in fact been less apparent at Meg's Mill than at Rycot Castle. The lordly line had been perplexed with prodigal sons and ambitious fathers. But the Harstons, clods of the valley, stagnant as their own mill-dam, instead of ruining themselves by mercenary specula- tion or political jobbery, elections, or the turf, were content to labour for their bread six days of the week, and doze through their Sabbath leisure. In the ripeness of years they died on the selfsame flock-bed wherein they had first beheld the light; having accomplished little in the interim save the compulsory duty of self-sustenance. Well for the Rycots of Rycot Castle if they had done no worse!
"At the period of which we are writing, the proprietors of the two here- ditary estates—the estate of ten acres and the estate of ten thousand—hap- pened to be as unfavourable specimens of their respective races as had yet thwarted the designs of Providence. Lord Rycot was expiating, by the acer- bities of a premature and peevish old age, a dissolute youth ; while Luke Harston the miller was a surly dog, unworthy of the pretty, good-humoured wife, who had quitted a cheerful home in an adjoining village to dispense a ray of sunshine to the gloomy old mill.
"Of the Earl personally little was known at Rycot. He had succeeded to the family estates only to encumber and resign them tothe hands of trustees, to be nursed and audited. Even when the death of his mother, the Dowager-Countess, enabled him to liquidate his more pressing debts, the dilapidated house and neglected gardens, which certified how long his pro- perty had been gnawn to the core by Jews and usurers, were little likely to captivate the fancy of a jaded selfish epicurean. Just, however, as he attained the sober age of sixty and a wig, (in which he perhaps expected to find the wisdom proverbially stated to inhabit such localities,) Lord Rycot married ; some said, because the heir-presumptive to his peerage had offended him by daring to vote, in the Commons, against the Government of his Lordship's illustrious and congenial friend the Prince Regent ; others, because unable to resist the attractions of one of the prettiest triflers of that frivolous court, the only daughter of a ducal house.
"At all events, the rash act served to reestablish Rycot Castle on some- thing of its former footing. The new Countess, who held that everybody of a certain rank should possess a fine house in town and,fine mansion in the country, insisted upon the reparation and refurnishing of the castle ; and, backed by a dowry of fifty thousand pounds, and an obstinate temper, she succeeded in having her own way.
"The whole parish set up a clamour of delight on learning that the great house, which for more than thirty years moth and rust had been corrupting, was about to be reestablished in pristine dignity. Long accustomed to resent the absenteeism of the family, and deplore, to accidental travellers, the neglect and ruin of the fine domain, it seemed as if the one thing needful to the prosperity of the district had been suddenly accomplished. " 'Heard the news, Harston ? ' cried Dr. Prosset, the gaunt apothecary of Rycot, whose old white mare, as grim and spectral as himself; was often seen tied to the door-post of Meg's Mill,—Luke Harston's wife having recently rendered him the father of a fine girl. 'Ay, and good news, famous news !' he continued, in reply to the miller's grumphy negative. 'The great folks are coming to reside at the castle.' I "'Much good may't do 'em !' was Harston's gracious rejoinder. "'Never mind what good 'twill do to them, my man,' resumed the meagre doctor, rubbing his lean hands; think of the benefit to all the country round.'
"'The country's done well enow without 'em this many a long year,' growled the miller, reluctantly taking from his mouth the long clay pipe he was smoking, to answer the bragging of one who, but for his young wife's behoof, would never have been allowed to cross his threshold,—so ill could he abide the doctor's pragmatical nature and intermeddling habits. " Well enow' is no reason, my good friend, that it should not do better,' rejoined Prosset. 'Is the parish of Rycot too rich or too proud to benefit by an annual outlay of twenty thousand pounds ? Them people will bring us butter to our bread, Harston—butter to our bread.' "The miller puffed on in silence ; a slight elevation of his eyebrows im- plying his private opinion that fifty earls and countesses resident at Rycot Castle would not bring an additional boll to his hopper, or relieve the shelves of the apothecary of their smallest phial. " don't mean to pretend,' resumed Prosset, finding that the miller's surly taciturnity left all the talk in his hands, 'that the community is any the better for possessing lords and ladies. Your level ground is ever the wholesomest. In your calling, miller, you must have observed that corn grown in the open, is heavier in the ear than when overshaded by the hill- side? But there are exceptions to every rule, Harston,—there are excep- tions; and these parts are sadly in want of resident gentry, to keep middle folks like Brownsell and Parson Bursley, who are always jingling the money in their pockets, from trampling us down.' "
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