FICTION.
ALADORE.* MR. NEWBOLT'S new romance is rather hard to describe with- out quoting the lines which serve as a preface :—
"In every land thy feet may tread Time like a veil is round thy head : Only the land thou seekst with me Never hath been nor yet shall be.
It is not far, it is not near,
Name it hath none that earth can hear: But there the soul shall build again Memories long destroyed of men, And joy thereby shall like a river Wander from deep to deep for ever."
The nomenclature, or part of it—Twain, Aladore, Paladore, Sir Turquin—suggests the Arthurian cycle, though the name of the heroine, Aithne, and her pedigree are distinctively Celtic. There are few place-names, and they have no topographical significance. Sulney, the home of Sir Twain, has an English ring, but it is only the starting-point of his travels. The
country traversed is a dream landscape, with no rural inhabitants but shepherds, the flora is English, but the fauna
includes goat-footed Fauns. Aladore is a variant upon the Islands of the Blest, a mystical paradise in mid-ocean which, can only be seen or visited by the initiated; Paladore is its antithesis, the home of jarring creeds and clans; and the only other cities mentioned are those of Daedala (which Mr. Newbolt misspells Daedala) and the City of the Saints, in which the life of those who dwelt therein "was all to ring bells and to hear them and to do no other thing," an occupation which led to drowsihood and futility. The tasks imposed on Sir Twain by the Prince of Paladore inevitably recall the labours of Hercules. But Sir Twain, though on occasion an excellent man at arms, is a much more complex character than any of the heroes of Greek mythology. He is a knight-errant, in the literal sense of the phrase, but there is only one lady for him, and his aim is not rescue, but to find and to ascend to the same plane as this elusive and Protean maiden, of whom he says in one passage : " Ah ! lady mine and not mine! For, as I think, you were a rose in Eden, and a golden child in Babylon, and a rainbow in Arcady, and a moon- light shadow on the walls of Troy : and you were loved of Tristram and of Troilus, and for you Lancelot fought, and Sigurd rode the fire, and the sons of Usnach died." It is obvious that a romance which is at the same time a subtle and far-reaching allegory demands a special medium of expression. Mr. Newbolt has deliberately adopted an archaic style, but, though the turns of phrase and a good many words are unfamiliar, his diction is in the main simple and always intelligible. It is not a wonderful tour de force like Sebastian Evans's rendering of the Legend of the Grail, but it shows none the less a faithful study of Malory and Froissart. Yet while Mr. Newbolt writes like a scholar and a poet, he occasionally condescends to a modernism. In one passage we find the phrase " made good" in the modern American sense, though American phrases—like "letting things slide" • Al.alore. By Henry Newbolt. London; William Blackwood and Sons. rasa, e--are often of good Elizabethan provenance. But we cannot altogether disabuse ourselves of the idea that Mr. Newbolt may have allowed these neologisms to slip in of set purpose, as though to indicate that for all its ethereal quality his romance is no mere exercise of unrestrained imagination, but a parable of special application to the conflicting aims and temptations of modern life. For Ywain is a type of the soul which is torn in two by the diverse claims of desire and service, of self-expression and self-sacrifice, just as Paladore typifies the rule of compromise and convention, the City of the Saints the asphyxiating influence of outworn creeds, and the City of Daedala the tyranny of mechanistic materialism. And though Twain and his fellow-pilgrim and good angel seem to have come to their own in the enchanted city of Aladore, yet are they unable to continue for long therein. As Aithne tells him for his comfort, " This is the fortune of men, to dwell in two realms, until that our life is changed; and it may be that the time is not long. And what matter, if by our own magic we may come and go ? and what grief, if we may be together ? " Thus the passing of Twain and Aithne in the last great fight at Paladore is robbed of its sadness by the assurance that they have achieved their pilgrimage and dwell for ever in the other realm.
We have only to add that, just as the story illustrates the dual nature of man, so also is it contrived to serve a double purpose. Those who read between the lines will find in it an allegory which leaves few of the greater problems of life un- touched. At the same time, those to whom this oblique method makes no appeal can enjoy it merely as a delightful and unusual fairy-tale, full of strange surprises, and told in prose of remarkable distinction and melody.
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