Out of Due Time. By Mrs. Wilfrid Ward. (Longmans and
Co. 6s.)—It is unfortunate that Mrs. Wilfrid Ward in her latest book has allowed her preoccupation with a question of Church policy to expel all proper fictional interest. Nothing could be better, both in charm of style and sincerity of treatment, than the early chapters dealing with the girlhood of Mary Fairfax, who tells the story. But when the D'Etranges family come upon the scene the theme becomes, not the development of character by means of incident, but the problem how far the authority of Rome can over- ride the modern scientific spirit. Three-fourths of the book are a careful and skilful defence of a kind of obscurantism, on which we need pass no opinion, since it has nothing to do with the art of fiction. The heroine, who is first of all affianced to the Comte D'Etranges, the leader of the Liberal revolt, ultimately marries a commonplace and somewhat verbose English Roman Catholic, and the Comte, after a wild period of estrangement, is in the end reconciled with Rome through the example of his sister's life. As we have said, the main interest of the book has nothing to do with fiction, but the author of "One Poor Scruple" is so genuine a novelist that, in spite of the handicap she has set herself, the main characters are subtly drawn and have a kind of vitality which shines through the dreary mists of ecclesiastical sophistry. Mary Fairfax herself, and the Comte, and especially Marcelle, are all drawn with insight and vigour. The pity of it is that there is no real stage on which they can act. Mrs. Ward has essayed the impossible,—a novel which shall show a solution alike for certain human problems and certain difficult, and in their way important, questions of Roman policy. But the tasks of the artist and the pamphleteer cannot be com- bined, and in her later chapters the personalities of her men and women become abstractions as shadowy as the names in the Platonic dialogues.
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