RECENT NOVELS.*
MR. MERRIMAN must be congratulated not only on the excel:- lence of his new novel, but the singular prescience displayed in his choice of a theme. Its appearance in serial form con- clusively established its priority in execution to the disclosures. in the Hooley case, on which it forms an illuminative and legitimate commentary. For the " corner " with which Mr. Merriman is here concerned is not any smiling angulus lerrarum. such as that of which Horace sang, but a monopoly in the exploitation of which unscrupulous financiers and greedy Peers are closely associated. Lord Ferriby, for example, admirably forestalled the attitude of some of Mr. Hooley's- noble friends by interpreting the ethics of commerce to mean that "a man may take anything that his neighbour is fooL enough to part with." Satire of futile philanthropy is no new thing in fiction, but Mr. Merriman has given it an entirely original turn by showing how a bogus charity might be con- verted into a gigantic and sinister monopoly. Roden's, Corner, to put the plot in a nutshell, tells how, under the pretext of humanitarianism, a German chemist and an English financier secured the control of a dangerous industry, and established a huge " corner " therein. The story resolves. itself into a duel, literally to the death, between the few honest men who associated themselves with the movement in its innocent early stage as a Trust Fund, organised on behalf of the employes, and Roden and Von Holzen—the pair already mentioned—who control the manufacture of the product of the " malgamite " works in Holland. Lord Ferriby is- " squared " by the latter, but on the side of the angels are- Tony Cornish, a brilliant but hitherto unstable knight-errant of society, who develops unexpected grit in the process of " smashing " the " corner ; " Major White, a stolid, taciturn soldier with a genius for ready action at a crisis ; and Mr. Wade,.
* (1.) Rod en's Corner. By Henry Beton Merriman. London, Smith, Elder,,.. and Co.—(2.) The Rogue's Paradise an Sztraraoansa. By Edwin Pugh and Charles Gleig. London James Bowden.—(3.) John Splendid: the Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn. By Neil Munro. London : William Blackwood and Sons.—(4.) A Sensational Case. By Florence Warden. London : Ward, Lock, and Co.—(5.) A Crowned Queen: the Romance of a Minister of State. By Sydney C. Grier. London: William Blackwood and Sons.— (64 Arachne : a Historical Romance. By Georg Ebel... Translated from the, German by Mary Safford. London: Sampson Low and Co. a banker of blameless integrity and great sagacity. They liave a devoted but injudicious ally in Mrs. Vansittart—the -widow of a victim of Von Holzen's—whose guerilla tactics are wasted against Von Holzen's iron resolve, and only suc- ceed in wounding Roden's self-esteem. Roden's belief that bia love for Mrs. Vansittart is returned is, however, a minor matter; the plot is much more seriously complicated by Tony Cornish's love for Dorothy Roden, the sister of the man whose " corner " he is trying to smash. Among the minor characters we may especially note the banker's daughter, a delightful specimen of the modern girl, who did not seem—in the earlier chapters at any rate—" to have had time to decide yet whether life was a rattling farce or a matter of deadly earnest," and Uncle Ben, one of the " malgamite " workers, who sprang " from the class whose soul takes delight in the music of the concertina, and rises on bank holidays to that height of gaiety which can only be expressed by an inter- change of hats." Von Holzen is a decidedly interesting villain, with nothing petty about his aims or means, and Mr. Merriman is very happy in illustrating how his entire indifference to women proved at once his greatest strength and at the same time an occasional source of weakness. Roden, on the other hand, is a rather shadowy, as well as "shady," personage, and one cannot help thinking that his sister, if ehe was really as clever as she is represented, would have guessed his secret much earlier. This, however, is only a venial blemish, if it is a blemish, in an extremely interesting and well-written novel. We can also overlook the incon- eistency of which Mr. Merriman is guilty in describing Von Holzen on p. 53 as a man of medium height, and yet stating • on p. 265 that he was a few inches below the stature of Dorothy Roden, who on p. 62 is said to be a small woman. Indeed, our only serious grievance against the author is the almost mechanical regularity with which his reflections on the progress of the story or on things in general are rounded off with sententious epigrams, generally of a cynical character, — e.g., "It is a strange fact that intimacy with any one who has made for himself a great name leads to the inevitable con- clusion that he is unworthy of it," a rather cumbrous para- phrase of the maxim that "no man is a hero to his own valet." The cynicism of these interspersed comments is often gratuitous, and might easily mislead the unthinking observer into imagining Mr. Merriman to be a misanthrope. As a matter of fact, the tone of the book as a whole is admirably *me, wholesome, and kindly.
Corrupt finance also supplies the motive in Messrs. Pugh and Gleig's romance, though there all resemblance ceases between Mr. Merriman's novel and The Rogue's Paradise. When Mr. Jabez Balfour absconded to the Argentine he was described in the florid phrase of a newspaper agency as living in • "semi-saltanic luxury" at Salta. The description, which was hardly borne out by the facts, applies closely enough to the exile of Mr. Joshua Sharp, absconding company promoter, in the colony of Berona, " a toy territory in the far Western Hemi. ephere." There he entertains an eccentric Radical Baronet who has married a cook, and the point of the story consists in the successful escape of Mr. Sharp from the clutches of three Scotland Yard detectives, by the simple device of his informing them that Sir Rowland G-wyn is the man they are in search of. A. certain piquancy is lent to the situation by the fact that Lady Gwyn had jilted the chief inspector, then a simple constable, for her aristocratic admirer. Now, although the story is labelled an extravaganza, we cannot, oven at the risk of being accused of taking a mere jest in deadly earnest, forbear from protesting against the manner in which a canting scoundrel like Mr. Joshua Sharp is made Ito appeal to the sympathy of the reader on the strength of his daughter's innocence and his own successful practical joke. The disciples of the new humour/have indeed to go tar afield in their quest of food for m&th when they are reduced to serve up so tasteless a dish as this.
Mr. Neil Munro's aim in John Splendid is clearly defined in his charming dedication to a young kinsman, and carried out with great energy and skill in his striking romance of the shire of Argile—we follow the archaic spelling adopted throughout the story—in the mid-seventeenth century. He admits and defends his anachronisms, on the ground that his book is not history, but "a. picture of lives and manners of a county thalo as dear to us in every rock and valley, of a people we know whose blood is ours." His theme is the Little Wars of Lorn,
the conflicts between Argile and Montrose, as narrated by a young chieftain of the glens, who had won his spurs in Mackay's Highland corps in Germany and returned to his home just in time to take part in repelling the invasion of the glens by Montrose and the Iriehry. The novel is not only an uncommonly spirited entertainment, viewed as a succession of exciting incidents, but it furnishes in the persons of the central figure and his associates an elaborate and interest. ing study of the traits of the Highland temperament. "John Splendid," the real hero of the book, is a poor cousin of the Marquis, an adventurer of little schooling but ready wit, a fighter, a poet, an egoist,—in short, a Highland Cyrano de Bergerac who carries his loyalty to young Elrigmore to Quixotic lengths in the furtherance of the latter's chequered courtship of Mistress Betty Brown. "We call him Splendid," said one of his friends, "not for his looks, but for his style "—another point of resemblance with Cyrano —and his style, whether in speech or action, renders him an invariably engaging and picturesque figure. There are several other striking portraits in the story, notably Gordon, the Lowland minister, whose fanaticism is redeemed by his courage and humanity, and the Marquis of Argile, a strange compost of cavalier and scholar ; but they are all dominated by the hero, who justifies his title even in his mendacity. The narrative and dialogue are freely interspersed with Gaelic, and the Southron reader will occasionally long for a glossary. But in the main it is easier reading than Mr. Crockett, with whom, as a chronicler of heroic Scotland, Mr. Munro need not fear the ordeal of comparison.
Miss Warden's new novel, which opens with the unexpected acquittal of Mr. Linley Das on the charge of arson and murder, promises a richer harvest of mystery and sensation than is fulfilled in the sequel. It is impossible to feel deeply interested in a heroine who shows such suididal disinclination to break loose from her degrading surroundings. A Sensa- tional Case, moreover, is lamentably undistinguished in style. Mr. Gerard Waller, a young man of good birth and education, is represented as saying to the heroine, "I mustn't let you talk, and I mustn't let you cry. So please, Mrs. Hilliard, ma'am, don't do either, but listen to me." In A Crowned Queen Mr. Sydney C. Grier tells at great length a tale that, if a hack- neyed proverb be true, must prove exceedingly flattering to Mr. Anthony Hope. But the fortunes of Lord Cyril and Queen Ernestine will be best appreciated by readers unversed in the annals of Ruritattia. Arachne, by the late Dr. Ebers, is a romance of Egypt in the third century B.C., and like all the works of that writer, is readable, interesting, but decidedly ponderous.
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