SILAS BRAUNTON.*
Sonmen and tragic narratives of rural life in the Western Counties have become almost a commonplace of contem- porary literature. But though Mr. Whitham's new novel is such a narrative, it leaves us in no doubt as to his sincerity. He is clearly not aping a manner but presenting us with his own vision of life ; it may be a clouded vision, but at lea. st it is his own. Silas Braunton is a young farmer who crushes the emotional side of his nature and sacrifices everything to ambition. Hastily assuming that his neglected young wife is having an intrigue with one of the farm labourers, a common type of mean rascal that Mr. Whitham has sketched very cleverly, Silas drives the pair of them away and thus forces his wife, a very weak character, to become the mistress of a man she dislikes. Silas realizes all his ambitions and becomes the richest farmer in the district, but, as may be expected, does not find any satisfaction in the banquet of Dead Sea fruit that inevitably follows. The death of his wife's (though not his own) child, whom he has adopted and come to love, adds the finishing stroke, and we leave him a broken man, with no hope in this world and little belief in the next. Such is the rough outline of a story that takes us through a novel of considerably more than the average length, but the writer's appeal depends less on his skill in narrative than on his ability to show us a whole countryside in the tragic light of his main conception. There are some obvious faults. The ;sook moves too cumbrously ; it is too heavy and wordy ; and though the central figure, Silas himself, is ambitiously con- ceived, his psychology is rather crudely handled. But the minor figures, the people of the countryside, for the most part farm labourers, are drawn with considerable power ; and every scene at Nightcott Farm has a verisimilitude that makes it fasten upon the reader's mind. Mr. Whitham knows the country he writes about and the men and women in it, and he is not content to take the easy way but reaches up to an ample and dignified theme. His reputation should be further strengthened by this fine, conscientious piece of work.
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