BOOKS.
RECENT NOVELS.* THERE is a large number of readers, chiefly feminine, to whom the attractiveness of a work of fiction depends very largely upon the attractiveness of the characters which figure in it; and this or that novel is condemned unreservedly because Sir Reginald is " so disagreeable" and Mrs. Vavasour "so dreadfully silly," when probably the impression of the gentle- man's disagreeableness and the lady's silliness is the very thing at which the author has been aiming. To such readers it would hardly be safe to recommend Mrs. Oliphant's Janet, for not one of its characters can be regarded with entire complacency ; but the few (and they are not so few as they once were) who can appreciate fine workmanship employed upon any not unworthy theme, will find in the novel much pleasant reading. At first it bids fair to be one of the quietest of quiet books ; for when Janet Summerhayes, after the death of her aunt Mary, begins her career as a governess in the house of the gentle old widow lady, Mrs. Harwood, her lines seem to be cast in a place which is certainly pleasant enough, but is as certainly decidedly humdrum. At the out- set, the new governess has, indeed, the excitement of a pitched battle with her fourteen-years-old pupil, Julia ; but as what seems likely to be a long campaign is practically at an end after the first encounter of the hostile powers, there is nothing left for Janet but to watch the progress—if progress it can be called—of Gassy Harwood's most commonplace love-affair, and to listen to Mrs. Harwood's eulogies upon her son Dolff, whose Oxford career is hardly so rich as it might be in material for entertaining colloquy. Certainly when there are indications that Mr. Charles Meredith is becoming more interested in the quiet governess than in the young lady who
* (1.) Janet. By Mrs. Oliphant. 3 vols. London Hurst and Blaokott.— (2.) Urith: a Tale of Dartmoor. By S. Baring Gould. 3 vols. London: Methuen and Oo.—(3.) A Draught of Lotto. By Roy Toilet. 3 vols. London : Smith, Elder, and Co.—(4.) A Sensitive Plant. By E. and D. Gerard. 3 vols. London I Kogan Paul and Co.— (5.) Stephen Ellicott's Daughter. By Mrs. J. H. Needoil,
3 vols. London : P. Warns and 0o.—(13 ) Pell among 7'hioves. By D. Christie Murray and Hem' y Berman. 2 vols. London Macmillan and Co.— (p.) The Dower of Earth. By Ethel Glarebrook. 3 vole. London Percival and Co.—i8.) Deo Penniless Princesses. ly Oharlotte M. Yong°. 2 vols. London: Macmillan and ,
has a prior claim to his attentions, and when the very unheroic Dolff also falls a victim to Janet's unobtrusive but not quite- unconsciously exerted fascinations, we see that breakers are ahead; and, indeed, the rivalry of the two young men. has more serious results than at first sight seem possible. It is, however, the discovery by Janet of the well-concealed skeleton in the Harwood family cupboard, and her something more than in- discreet action in revealing it to Meredith, which really bring about the catastrophe ; and the situations in the third volume, which have freshness of invention as well as vigour of presen- tation, are of a kind to appeal to the lover of exciting narrative' as well as to an admirer of good workmanship. It is clear that Mrs. Oliphant's hand has lost none of its cunning, and while Janet does not rank with her most noteworthy perform- ances, it is certain to be enjoyed.
Byron said that description was his forte, and Mr. Baring Gould might, without any violation of modesty, make the same boast. We have no living novelist—and we are not forgetting Mr. Blackmore's Lorna Dooms, and some of Mr. William Black's Highland stories—who is more successful in impressive pre- sentation of the wilder and more sombre features of natural scenery,—the dreariness of Fen country under cloud, the clash, of waves upon an iron-bound coast, the soundless solitude of a great sweep of heathery moorland. In his new romance, Urith, which has for its background the Dartmoor of a couple of centuries ago, there are the familiar breadth and vividness. of pictorial handling ; and again, as in Mehalah and Richard Cable, he has been successful in giving to the actors in his drama much of the rugged picturesqueness of the landscape- through which they move. The opening of the story could not well be more effective than it is. The picture of Urith Mel- ville, the wild daughter of the moorland, crouching solitary at. the foot of the groat monolith, while for miles around her roars the red sea of burning heather, arrests the attention at once ; and the incidents of the rescue by Anthony Cla,verdon, with the eventful ride over the Lyke-Way, the much-feared high-road of the dead, strike boldly the key-chord of the wild minor. strain in which the story is set. Urith herself is perhaps a little disappointing. The impression of her character which we derive from this first chapter hardly prepares us for the collapse of her proud, fiery spirit which follows her ill-starred marriage to Anthony ; but Anthony himself—obstinate, im- pulsive, weak, and wayward, yet having a core of loyalty which preserves him from final moral catastrophe—maintains- throughout a vital consistency of individuality, and is one of Mr. Baring-Gould's most successful studies in complex character portraiture. His oscillations between the two prin- cipal feminine characters, the wife who unwittingly irritates. and disappoints him, but whom he really loves, and Julian Chrymes, the proud, tiger-like beauty who fascinates him in spite of himself, provide the author with some strong situa- tions; and while the emotional interest is never quite so intense as in some of his previous stories, the literary handling has seldom been finer. Though Urith is not, strictly speaking, & historical novel, Mr. Baring-Gould indicates by a =miser of skilful touches the crude but intense enthusiasm of the West Country for the Protestant cause, and the search of James's soldiery for the scattered followers of Mon- mouth is utilised as machinery for an exciting denouement.. The novel is certainly the best we have had from Mr. Baring- Gould for several years.
A Draught of Lethe is an exceedingly clever book, though it is in some respects hardly as strong a book as might fairly have been expected from the author of that exceptionally powerful story, The Outcasts. The comparative method of criticism may, however, easily become unfair, and it is best to appraise the new novel on its own merits, which are certainly not inconsiderable. A Draught of Lethe is an example of that kind of fiction which has come to be called rather absurdly 'psychological" romance. Mr. Fitzalan Lindley, the younger' son of an English Peer, who has adopted painting as a pro- fession, is travelling in Germany, and in the mortuary' chamber of a small German town, he is struck by the beauty of a girl whose corpse—or what seems to be such—is awaiting burial. Of course, from the first the reader knows that the event will justify Lindley's conviction that Etheleen Stuart is not really dead, and when she awakens from the deathlike cataleptic trance into which she has been thrown by a sudden shock, and, after a long period of sub- sequent prostration, regains normal health and strength, it is discovered that she has entirely lost all recollection of events previous to her mysterious seizure. • The plagiarism- 'hunters will rejoice to discover a remarkable coincidence between this opening and that of a novel entitled The Gold of Ophir, noticed in these columns nearly a year ago*; but the game of these gentlemen is seldom worth the candle, and apart from this coincidence the books have nothing in common. Aided by a curious clue, the nature of which it would be unfair to indicate, Lindley returns to England, determined to unravel the mystery of Etheleen's life. To the incidents of this quest the remainder of the novel is devoted, and the author is to be heartily congratulated upon the ingenuity and interest of his narrative scheme. Of course, in a story of this kind, character-drawing is subordinated to plot-weaving ; but the sketches of Vaux, the non-exhibiting painter, with his surface cynicism and his underlying kindliness, and of Mr. Badgerly, the interviewer, whose being's end and aim is the procuring of piquant "copy," are thoroughly lifelike and entertaining. The only serious artistic blot is the introduction of that horrible episode, the attempt of Dr. Falck to murder his rival by means of his new am:esthetic. It is quite unexpected, it stands out of all relation to the action, and has the look of being an afterthought which is quite out of place in a book that is otherwise so admirably planned.
The story in A Sensitive Plant is held together by misunder- standings which even the known skill of the authors does not suffice to render quite credible. The sorrows of Cairnbro Chichester and Janet Sinclair, from which they do not emerge until the end of the third volume is reached, are the result of stupidity so crass that it is impossible thoroughly to realise it. Chichester believes that Janet regards him with indifference ; Janet believes that Chichester has committed a murder, and is going about in peril of his life,—two delusions which could have been dispelled by five minutes of sensible conversation between the people concerned. We admit that this kind of thing is so common in the average novel of the circulating library as to be hardly worth noticing; but then, this is not the kind of novel that we expect from the writers of Beata and The Pillars of Hercules, and it would be a poor compliment to judge them by the conventional low standard. As a study in shyness, the portrait of Janet is excellent, and quite free from exaggeration. It is not the shyness that is overdone, but the effect of the shyness both upon herself and others ; and the results of this mistake—which it would be tedious to point out in detail—are very irritating,—all the more irritating because A Sensitive Plant is in many ways so able and pleasant a book. The irascible Sir Alec, who makes a point of complaining of everything and disagreeing with everybody, is as entertaining in fiction as he would be terrible in real life, and as a specimen of the perfectly amiable and perfectly tactless woman, Miss Penny,-who is never daunted by ill-luck in. " breaking things" to her "dear brother," is simply a masterpiece. Mr. d'Obson, the epicure, whose slowly but steadily growing passion for Janet is rooted in his belief —fortunately, or unfortunately, erroneous—that she was the compounder of a certain wonderful lobster soug14, is drawn with rather coarse caricature strokes; but he is amusing—at any rate, for a time. The Venetian chapters are full of good local colour ; and while there is much to praise that has not been praised, all blame that is possible has been dispensed in the earlier sentences of our notice.
There may perhaps be something a trifle melodramatic in the way in which Mrs. Needell's hero displays his ruling virtue ; but if this be so, it is very quiet and subdued melo- drama, and the conception as a whole is essentially lifelike. Dwellers in an imperfect real world in which their worthiest friends sometimes disappoint: them, are apt to regard an imaginary ideal person as not merely imaginary, but untrue to human nature ; but this is really a subtle manifestation of cynicism disguising itself as knowledge of mankind. Anthony G-lynnes are doubtless rare, but they do exist, though there can be no doubt that Lancelot Henderson, with his veneer of light-hearted amiability and his utter lack of moral principle, is the more familiar type. He is really a vulgarised Tito, just as Hester is another Romola,, without the soupcon of hardness which characterises George Eliot's heroine. One might even carry the parallel further, and see in the relations of Anthony and Hester some likeness to those of Savonarola and Romola ; but these comparisons are always misleading when pushed
• " That Sad Second Volume," Spectator, May 10th, 1890.
to an extreme ; and Mrs. Needell is not a George Eliot, though she is a very thoughtful and careful worker. There is real imaginative insight in her record of the successive steps of Lancelot's descent from selfish recklessness to actual crime ; and the final breach between him and his sister Winifred, when her pride is broken down by the proof of his dishonour, is a powerful and impressive situation. The Rector of Thorpe Brady, a scholarly man of the world transformed by mis- adventure into a country clergyman, is another fine creation ; and indeed, from first to last, Stephen Ellicott's Daughter is an exceptionally strong and beautiful story.
He Fell among Thieves is a bright, readable society novel, with no very great substance, but with sufficient "go "to carry the reader very pleasantly along. As may be inferred from the title, Messrs. Christie Murray and Herman devote them- selves largely to the seamy side of life, and, indeed, we have seldom been introduced to a more undesirable set of acquaint- ances than the gentlemanly thieves into whose clutches that exceedingly foolish young man Harry Wynne has the mis- fortune to fall. He is a good-hearted, open-handed young fellow of almost incredible folly ; but he has just sufficient brains to render him capable of learning from experience, which is more than can be said for most members of the tribe of gilded youth to which he belongs. The scheme by which he escapes from the difficulties in which he has involved him- self, by assuming the name of a travelling companion who turns out to be a notorious swindler, is conceived with real spirit and ingenuity, and, indeed, the whole of the second volume is a piece of very brisk narrative. The details are generally careful, but the authors make one curious slip. The daughter of an Earl, whether single or married, is always known by her Christian name, and "Lady McCorquodale " is therefore clearly inaccurate. She would be called Lady Emily or Lady Jane McCorquodale, as the case might be.
It does not need the absence of the name of any previous work from the title-page of The Dower of Earth to assure us that it is a first, or, at any rate, an early effort. Inexperience betrays itself in many ways : in Miss Ethel Glazebrook's novel it betrays itself by a total absence of form. If we were compelled to describe the book by one epithet only, we should have to describe it as a shapeless book. We are always being led away from the main highway of narrative into some by- path which turns out to be a cul-de-sac ; or, to change the figure, the author, instead of twining her threads of story together, leaves them hanging loose, and when the heroine must be finally disposed of somehow, she is made to commit suicide,—an ending as inartistic as it is unpleasant. Still, Miss Glazebrook must take courage. She can write well, and the creator of the clever, pushing, low-principled, and under- bred political adventurer, Mortimer Ashton, has the root of the matter in her. There is, in short, enough that is good in the book to make it highly probable that when its writer has attained more knowledge of the mechanism of her art, she will produce something a great deal better.
It may be bad taste on our part, but we confess that we would rather meet Miss Yonge in the lanes of a rural parish than on the broader field of history ; and we have found Two Penniless Princesses to be very hard reading. It is certainly a book which the average boy would pronounce "awfully dry," and there is nothing whimsical or irrelevant in such a reference to the critic of the schoolroom, for there is hardly a first-rate historical novel that could be named—with perhaps the single exception of Kingsley's Hypatia —which has not a multitude of boy-admirers. There is a felt want of vitality in Miss Yonge's story, The Princesses of the title are the two younger daughters of the ill-fated James I. of Scotland, and in the incidents of their progress through England and visit to France, there is material which Scott or Lord Lytton, or even Mr. G. P. R. James, would have made very interesting, but which in Miss Yonge's hands is somehow rather dull. No positive defect can be pointed out, but the work as a whole fails to attract, probably because it lacks that special kind of imagination which creates the past anew and makes it as real as the present.
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