RECENT NOVELS.*

So far as our knowledge extends, Miss Ada Cambridge is, in one respect, unique among novelists. She is the only writer of fiction we can remember who has spoken well of critics, not merely as dispensers of praise, but as dealers in that honest and not unkindly censure which—supposing the reviewer to be competent and the reviewed teachable—can hardly fail to be of service. Miss Cambridge, however, has passed her

• (1.) Fidelis. By Ada Cambridge. 8vols. London : Hutchinson and

(2..) The Tremlett Diamonds. Br Alan St. Aubyn. 2 vols. London : Chatto and Wmcitui.—(3.) The Story of Ursula. By Mrs. Hugh Bell. 3 vols. Loudon: Hutoninson and 00.-4.) A Bachelor's Family. By Henry F. Buller. 3 vols. London : Hti-st and Blackett.—(5.) Newly Positioned. By Margaret B. Cro.s. 2 vols. London : Hurst and Blackett.—(6.) Haunted by Posterity. By W. Earl Hodgson. London: A. and C. Black.

'prentice stage ; what she can do she does with a very fair measure of effectiveness ; and of all the things that a sensible critic might say of Fidelis we can think of only one likely to be of any service to her. We have protested against that tiresome narrative expedient, the misunderstanding, until we are tired of protesting ; but as Miss Cambridge seems to have an open mind we will try once more. What we should like to ask her is whether she honestly regards it as possible that a young man and a young woman should be passionately attached to each other, that they should have various meetings under circumstances calculated to bring about an explicit or implicit revelation of feeling, and that, nevertheless, each should im- plicitly misinterpret the emotions of the other ? If she answers in the affirmative she is, we venture to think, in a minority of one among men and women who know the world ; indeed the opposite conviction has been embodied in a popular proverb which states that "Love and a cough cannot be hid." If, on the contrary, her answer is in the affirmative, what becomes of the long alienation of Fidelia and Adam Drewe, which is the keystone of her narrative structure P It seems to stand condemned as the one ineptitude in an able, interesting, and wholesome novel; for there is no doubt whatever that Fidelis is justly entitled to these epithets. It is the story of an ugly duckling ; and indeed "An Ugly Duckling" would have been a better title than the one chosen, for neither Adam nor Fidelia is by any means a paragon of faithfulness. This, however, is a detail. The story of the uncomely lad who made up his mind to conquer in the battle of life by brains rather than by more obvious charms, is told with vivacity and sympathy, and the record of Adam's varied but innocent amours has touches of both humour and tenderness. We have rather a grudge against Miss Cambridge for her treat- ment of Sarah French, who strikes us as being worth two or three Fidelias ; but we will not carp any more at a really pleasant story.

The lady whose pseudonym is "Alan St. Aubyn " seems to be falling into the habit of searching the newspapers for the raw material of fiction. In the Face of the World was an expansion of a paragraph announcing a great renunciation made for conscience' sake by a member of a big brewing firm ; and The Tremlett Diamonds is a dressing-up of the story of a jewel robbery which roused some excitement in society a year or two ago. We cannot commend the taste of "Alan St. Aubyn's " latest experiment, for her richantrO of a very sad story is likely to be very painful to more than one person whose blameless grief has at least a claim to sympathetic silence ; and in this respect the book is one of the worst illustrations ef a bad fashion. Nor in any other respect is the novel one to be commended. We can hardly remember ever having read a more clumsily constructed story. Captain Tremlett's action in hiding his wife's diamonds on her wedding.day, for a purely malicious purpose, is simply incomprehensible and incredible ; but still more so is his further action in paying a detective to find evidence against Edith Darcy, which he had the best reason to believe could not possibly be forthcoming. Even these things, however, almost sink into insignificance beside the extraordinary ignorance of elementary law indicated by the story of Edith's trial. Criminal and civil proceedings are inextricably confused ; a prosecutor is referred to as a plaintiff ; and of the two " plaintiffs " one becomes such against her will. We should think it unkind to be severe upon an author for error concerning obscure technicalities, though it is certainly unwise to write upon any subject con- oerning which one's information is defective; but these things are not technicalities—they come well within the ordinary knowledge of every well-informed man and woman. We have warmly praised one or two of "Alan St. Anbyn's " previous books, for though they have often been deplorably slipshod, we are not among those who think that a novel can be made by grammar, or hopelessly destroyed by the loss of it. It can, however, be wrecked irretrievably by such_faults as those which deface The Tremlett Diamonds.

We cannot, at the moment, remember a more deceptive novel than The Story of Ursula, and if we have ever read one, we are very glad to have forgotten it. The first two volumes are not by any means flawless, for the narrative is marred by conventional expedients, among which we find that decrepit friend, the intercepted love-letter, but they are pleasant, interesting, and in perfect taste ; and though very soon in the story we become convinced that there is discomfort ahead,

we are entirely unprepared for the hideous and revolting situation which is sprang upon us about the middle of the third volume. We say "sprung upon us" advisedly, for there is nothing in the character of Ursula, nothing in the character of her fellow-sinner Dick Mariner, nothing in the antecedent events, to explain their sudden and frightful fall, unless indeed we are to suppose that grief has rendered Ursula temporarily insane; and even this is no justification, for no candid advocate for " freedom " in literature will contend that the lapse of a pure and faithful woman which is due simply to mental aberration, lies within the boundary of legitimate art. The incident at the Dover hotel is one of these nauseating things which lack the usual apology made on behalf of this kind of work, for it is not merely nauseating, but simply incredible. There is much in the book which leads us to believe that in this unsavoury portion of it the writer is doing injustice to herself by following a vile fashion, but we have to pronounce upon the work as it stands ; and even the winning portrait of the little boy Ralph—a singularly truthful and beautiful study—fails to modify our verdict that The Story of Ursula is a novel utterly without justification.

It is easy to enjoy so bright, genial, and healthy a book as A Bachelor's Family, and it is hardly less easy to pick holes in it, though we are not sure that the hole-picking will prove a specially remunerative occupation. Mr. Briller's handling of character is excellent. With one, or perhaps two exceptions, his men and women, his youths and his maidens, are thoroughly alive, and they are alive in a very pleasant fashion. He has

managed to write an interesting story without introducing a single person who bears any resemblance to a villain, and he has managed even to dispense with a fool, for the term is toe contemptuous to apply to poor Colonel Dymott, who, in twenty-five years of brooding over an imaginary wrong, has—

on one point, at any rate—completely lost his mental balance. Captain Grindrod—the bachelor of the title—is Mr. Buller's greatest triumph. He is a delightful creature, who belongs to the tribe of Dickens-like "characters," though his portrait is entirely free from those touches of exaggeration and carica- ture which Dickens could never bring himself to forego. It is in the matter of construction that the story fails. Miss Crookenden is apparently introduced in order that Hugh Dymott may be provided with a wife at the end of the third volume; but she is really a superfluous character who is dragged by main force into the novel, and the story of her engagement to the shadowy Barton is at once unintelligible and uninteresting. Then, too, Mr. Buller would never have been able to get on at all if he had not made several people insist upon making secrets of facts which made no reasonable or plausible demand for secrecy. Colonel Dymott's reticence about his family may be partly intelligible because he was a monomaniac ; but there was no reason whatever why Captain Grindrod should pose as a widower, and conceal the fact that Christine was merely his adopted child, or why Hugh's relatives should refrain from imparting to him even the outlines of his father's history. These things are unfor- tunate, because they impair the pleasure of those who are interested in the art of narrative ; but unsophisticated readers will find A Bachelor's Family very enjoyable.

There are novels which gain a certain specific gravity from the fact that they are devoted to the working-out of a definite theorem, and Newly Fashioned is one of them. The motto OD

the title-page is taken from Spenser :—

"Such is the power of that sweet passion, That it all sordid baseness doth expel, And the refined mind doth newly fashion Unto a fairer form ; " and the motive is that of the story of Undine,—the awakening of the soul, the birth of moral and spiritual consciousness by the power of the "sweet passion" of love. The theme is an ambitious one, and the treatment is not in all respects per-

fectly satisfying ; but Newly Fashioned is undoubtedly an interesting novel Jim Fyffe happens to be in an assize town during the trial of the beautiful girl, Beatrice Hayes, for the

theft of a purse containing 250 from the lady with whom she

has been living as companion. Fyffe, an imaginative, chivalrous, fine-natured young fellow, is convinced, not by reasoning bat by instinct, not only that the girl is innocent,

but that she realises his ideal of womanhood ; and before the verdict is pronounced, he writes to her a proposal of marriage. As a matter of fact, Beatrice is guilty, for a strong temptation has appealed successfully to a nature exceptionally devoid of the sense of moral obligation ; but the perjury of an important witness makes her acquittal inevitable, and within forty-eight hours after the verdict the absolutely friendless girl has promised to become the wife of her trustful champion. It is after marriage that Beatrice learns to love her husband, and from her love for him is born that more spiritual, selfless love for that ideal of character of which be has mistakenly sup- posed her to be the realisation. He can never know the truth unless she herself tells him, for the one man who shared her terrible secret is dead; but her own love has rendered it impossible for her to accept her husband's love any longer on false pretences, and suddenly, without preparation for what is naming, she makes her confession. The situation is a difficult one, and it admits of various kinds of treatment; but to us Miss Cross's treatment does not seem altogether convincing, and the death of the reconciled husband and wife is rather too obvious a cutting of the knot which the author was powerless to untie. If, however, Newly Fashioned is not a perfectly satisfactory novel, it is at any rate a book which has genuine interest and a curious kind of fascination.

Our feeling about Mr. Earl Hodgson's story, Haunted by Posterity, is that it would have been a much more interesting and attractive book had it been less aggressively clever. Mr. Hodgson, so to speak, seems to be always taking his clever- ness in his hand and throwing it at us, until at last our main desire is to dodge the missile. He is too hungry for novelties —novelties of structure, of motive, of style—and he not un- naturally misses the charm which depends on the presence of the homely and familiar. The supernatural narrative scheme which is one result of this craving for the bizarre, strikes us as being altogether a mistake, for we fail to see what of im- portance is gained by it, and we see very plainly that a good deal is lost. The book is, in short, much harder reading than a book by an able man with a literary gift has any right to be; and yet he who reads on assiduously will be rewarded by some very bright entertaining pages. Perhaps the truth may be that Mr. Earl Hodgson, like one or two other novelists we might name, is a born essayist, who has dropped into fiction by mistake.