Greed's Labour Lost. By the Author of "Recommended to Mercy."
3 vols. (Samuel Tinsley.)—This is in part an autobiography. In the first portion of the tale the heroine tells the beginning of her story, and confesses with edifying penitence her misdeeds, the reading of harmful fiction among them (a source of mischief which we are unfeignedly glad to find the Author of Recommended to Mercy" denouncing). Then comes an interval in which the narrative is continued by some one else, and at the end of the third volume the autobiographer again takes it up, and brings it to a happy conclusion, happier, we are bound to say, than she seems to deserve. At all events, she has allotted to her two good husbands, and we are somewhat surprised that either should have chosen her. We cannot say that the novel has favourably impressed us either by its tone or its literary merit. What, for instance, can possibly be the meaning of such a sentence as this, said of a groat London physician, "The great man, not ungracefully for his time of life, took his fee and his departure." Why "for his time of life "? The villain of the piece, one Peyton Brand, is a caricature which does no "credit to the power of an author who has at least had experience in novel-writing.
Previous page
