A ROMAN SINGER.*
THOSE who agree with us in admiring Mr. Crawford's ability,. and deprecating, as disagreeable and unhealthy, the way in which he manifested it in To Leeward, will rejoice to find that he has not gone similarly astray in the work now to be con- sidered, and that its hero and heroine are a couple of wholesome- toned young people, to whom the interest and sympathy due to. lovers in a novel may safely be given. There is a smack of mediteval romance about the book,—which is a clever, short, somewhat slight, love-tale, containing such old-fashioned in- gredients as a fair damsel imprisoned in a remote castle, with a. stern Count for her father, a wicked Baron whom she detests for a suitor, and a true knight who finally delivers her from her persecutors. But the antique flavour of these materials is skil- fully counterbalanced by letting the story be told by a person • A Roman Singer. By F. Marion Crawford. London: Macmillan and Co. who is too unheroic and commonplace to have been chronicled in the ancient tales of chivalry, and whose homely individu- ality keeps continually peeping out—as if by accident—in a way that effectually prevents the reader from imagining him- self transported back out of modern times. This personage is a garrulous old Professor, bearing some resemblance to Paul Griggs (to whom, in Mr. Isaacs, the same office of narrator was assigned), Jut a better finished and more careful study. A quaint, thrifty, likeable old fellow is the Professor, priding him- self on his scholarship and knowledge of the world, yet simple and easy to deceive as a child,—slightly soured, yet having a warm, kindly heart, which often causes his actions to be at variance with his words and natural disposition. Though timorous, he never deserts his friends at a pinch ; though so niggardly that he cannot spend a single farthing without grudg- ing it, he sells his cherished vineyard unhesitatingly in order to raise money wherewith to assist his adopted son ; and though accustomed to a tranquil jog-trot existence which snits him exactly, he takes staff in hand at a moment's notice, and goes out into the world on a well-nigh hopeless expedition to try and find the woman his boy loves, and bring her to him. The Professor is altogether a capital sketch : whatever the other characters may be, he, at least, is genuine flesh and blood ; and the narrative gains greatly by the stamp of reality which it derives from him.
The scene of the story, as indicated by the title, lies in Rome and the neighbourhood ; and the local colouring is excellent,—if we, having no personal knowledge of that part of Italy, may venture to pronounce an opinion on the subject. Nino, the hero, is described as a possible Napoleon gone on the stage ; and, though rather too much gifted to be quite natural, is a preux chevalier whom one cannot help liking and wishing well to. High-minded, stainless, brave, and true, he is—to our thinking —the most attractive hero that Mr. Crawford has yet drawn. Endowed with an extraordinarily good voice, he is studying for his debut at the opera, when he falls in love at first sight with a lovely young German, whom he immediately resolves to marry, notwithstanding a disparity of birth which would have daunted many men ; for he is a peasant's son, and she the daughter of a Count. Carefully concealing the fact that he can sing, Nino manages to become her Italian master ; but instead of availing himself, as might be expected, of the oppor- tunities afforded by the lessons to make love to her, he keeps scrupulously to the part of teacher on those occasions, and reserves his declaration of passion for a far more original and dramatic time and situation. She is visiting the Pantheon at night ; and all the building lies in darkness, save for one small stream of moonlight entering through an aperture in the top ; then, as she stands in the white circle of light, there suddenly is heard the air from " Favorita "—" Spirt° gentil dei sogni miei," sung somewhere in the surrounding obscurity by a marvellous voice, to which she and her friends listen in breathless admira- tion, without having an idea who the invisible singer may be. Being German, and attracted to whatever is mysterious and romantic, she is haunted by the recollection of this scene, and longs to know the owner of the voice. Thus Nino's ingenious ruse is successful ; his song.in the dark makes the impression he desired ; and when at last the maiden discovers the singer to be none other than her hitherto hardly-noticed Italian master, she is already half in love with him without knowing it, and he has no difficulty in completing the conquest of her heart. Their felicity, however, is now prevented by the interposition of the tyrannical father, who carries off his daughter to an out-of-the-way castle in the mountains, and encourages the snit of a wicked old Baron. From these unwelcome atten- tions and her place of imprisonment it obviously behoves her faithful Nino to rescue her ; and how this was accomplished we will not reveal, but recommend our readers to get the book and find out for themselves.
We congratulate Mr. Crawford on having had the strength of mind to reduce the superfluous moralisings and reflections in which he has indulged in previous works ; still, we suspect that the temptation is not yet wholly conquered, and advise him not to forget to be on his guard against it. Another friendly caution which he might with advantage meditate upon is that he hardly pays enough attention to probabilities in writing his stories. In the present one, neither the stern father nor yet the evil Baron are lifelike individuals : the former speaks and acts as it does not seem likely for any real person to have spoken and acted ; and the latter (who, by-the-bye, enunciates the notable opinion that the only real nobles are Welshmen and Jews) professes himself to be the original Wandering Jew ! No doubt, there iff,, an intimation given at the end that the Baron may perhaps have been out of his senses,—which, however, is not asserted. positively ; but, even in that case, he does not become a very possible character ; because men like him, who are believed to be dangerously insane, are not generally allowed to go about with- out restraint or supervision, as he did. Again, there is no very sufficient reason why the Count should have been extremely anxious to marry his daughter to the cynical old Jew whom she hated, rather than to the young man of her own choice ; and had the author taken more pains to account satisfactorily for this, it would not have been labour wasted, as the story would run all the more smoothly. Yet another improbability is the lover who readily accepts a challenge from his lady-love's father; for it seems hardly likely that a young man so situated would not make some effort, at all events, to avoid the impending duel. And there is a baleful Baroness who, whether probable or not, would have been better omitted. She is a married woman who takes a violent and unprovoked fancy to a youth whose affections are elsewhere engaged, and who does all she can to divert them from their legitimate object. As such behaviour is not in itself an agreeable or edifying spectacle, and as in the present instance it is not necessary to the story, we do not quite know why the Baroness should have ever been introduced at all. Indeed, we are by no means sure that Mr. Crawford may not have perceived for himself that she was de trop, for he certainly shunts her out of the way at an unexpectedly early stage of the proceedings. After all these criticisms, it is only fair to say in conclusion that we like the book better than others which have appeared from the same pen, and advise our readers to send for it.
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