THE LAST FEAT OF THE SENSATION SCHOOL OF NOVELISTS.*

THE sensation novel is becoming a nuisance, and a nuisance which will, doubtless, rectify itself. It may be thrilling for the first time to see the witches' cauldron simmering, and bear of its

horrible ingredients,—

" Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat and slips of yew, Slivered in the moon's eclipse, Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips," tcc.

but even disgust becomes dull at last, and we should look on at the horrid "toil and trouble" after about the tenth rehearsal of its contents with as little awe, though probably less appetite, than the preparation of an ordinary potato pie. Con- sequently, every fresh reproducer of these horrible rites strives to bring a new contribution that will excite afresh the dulled organs of sensation. As the first witch brings a toad, the second caps it with the "fillet of a feuny snake" — a really unpleasant-sounding dish, by the way,—and the third thickens the gruel with the exceedingly disagreeable items we have mentioned above,—so the sensation novelists vie with each other how to renew the power of shuddering which their predecessors hare gone far to exhaust. Mr. Macgrigor Allan does not to our mind succeed in this. He is so very silly and so very dull that we should certainly never have noticed his book, had be not tried to stir up the interest of his readers by a device different from that of imaginative invention. Instead of merely inventing a new horror (which, however, he does also endeavour to do), he seeks to give his very inane work a fresh spice of interest by confessing at once that his hero's character is modelled on that of Shelley, and copying one or two of the leading features in that great poet's life, such as his relations with his father, his expulsion from Oxford, and others. He has even borrowed the surname of Shelley's first love, Miss Harriet Groves, for the mistress of Gerald Lindor ; the Christian name, however, he changes to Miriam, and be alters ber position in society to suit his purpose, as much as he alters her character. He has copied as closely as he could the opinions announced in Queen Mob, and as nearly as he was able the type of Shelley's nature — which is, however, about as near to the original as the likeness of Saladin which swings before the Saracen's Head to the great foe of the Crusaders.

"The character of Gerald Lindor," says Mr. Macgrigor Allan, in the first sentence of his preface, "the hero of the following story, is suggested by that of Shelley the poet, whose works I have read and still read with delight. While I regard the author as a man who was in advance of his age, and consequently in some degree a martyr to his invincible and uncompromising love of truth, there is much in Shelley's character which is common to all poets. The conception of Gerald Lindor is not intended as a special study of an individual, but as more or less an embodiment or type of the independent enthusiastic temperament which usually accompanies the creative mind. Beyond general characteristics, and one episode, no attempt has been made to trace in the following pages the career of Shelley ; nor, it may be added, to pourtray any of his family." The character of Sir Thomas Lindor is, however, very plainly intended as a copy from such accounts of Sir Timothy Shelley as Hogg and Medwin have left us, and the story of the expulsion from Oxford for atheism, and at least one other negotiation with the hero's father, are almost extracted from the records of the poet's life. No one would guess, from the sober tone of the few lines we have extracted from Mr. Allan's preface, with what a lavish allowance of literary cayenne pepper he intended to dish up this study from the life of Shelley.

• Nobly False. A. novel, in two volumes. Br James Muosvigor Allan. Newby. It is, however, easier to anticipate the futilities to come, from the author's modest account of his aim in delineating Miriam Groves.

"Respecting my heroine, Miriam, an ideal of womanly love and disinterestedness, of which I have dreamed for years before I attempted to fix the image of my fancy, I have, doubtless, been influenced in the conception of her character by such world-renowned types Rs those contained in Undine," Paul and Virginia,' the Haidee ' of Byron' 'Marguerite' (sic) in Faust, Atala," Romeo and Juliette ' (sic), the Bride of Lainmermoor,' &c., &e. The tale of unfortunate love well told never fails to enlist the warmest sympathies of the reader. The periods at which a man or woman of intelligence and sentiment becomes acquainted with the above-mentioned books constitute eras in individual existence. Yet, speaking critically, I think that in all these exquisite creations women, though represented as all more or less self-sacrificing, seem too much the passive victims of external circumstances, to display that extreme degree of self-abnegation of which the female nature is capable under the inspiration of love ... It is superfluous for me to say that I do not for an instant compare my humble work with any of these master- pieces. All I would say, while bowing before my intellectual liege lords, and gratefully and reverently acknowledging the inspiration I have re- ceived from them, is that in Miriam I have dared to dream of striking a still higher chord of sympathy—of a woman's devotion more sublime and complete than I have yet seen presented in fiction ; a devotion even more heart-moving than that exemplified in Jeptha's (sic) dau.liter, cheerfully offering her bosom to the sacrificial knife, since it is illustra- tive of the strongest of human ties—love. It will probably be thought by some that the sacrifice which Miriam makes for her lover is strained, exaggerated, and unnatural. I do not think so. In the unfathomed depths of woman's capacity of suffering and self-negation for a man she loves, conduct like that of Miriam may be proved no idle or impos- sible fiction."

The conception for which Mr. Macgrigor Allan has been in- debted to hints from" Undine," "Paul and Virginia," " Haidee," Faust's "Marguerite" (we had always thought she was a German girl, and called Gretchen), and Shakespeare's "Juliette," Lucy Ashton in the "Bride of Lammermoor," and, as Mr. Macgrigor

Allan adds, with a luxuriance of literary resource truly magni- ficent, "&c., &c., &c.," but in which he has "dared to dream of striking a still higher chord of sympathy," is, as might be expected from so vast a sweep of generalization and so high a flight of inspiration, entirely destitute of all individual features beyond "the raven-black hair, eyes large, dark, and lustrous, nose slightly aquiline, lips red as the berry of the holly, and complexion a little sunburnt," of which we read here not quite for the first time. To make the acquaintance of this young lady may, indeed, "con- stitute an era" in the life of some of Mr. Allan's readers; but if so, it will probably be an era of surfeit with these extremely silly and spasmodic efforts at the manufacture of new sensations.

The career of Gerald Linder is as follows. He is blessed with a saintly mother, who has a heart-complaint, and a blighted lover of her own. This lady, who, while she lives, stands between her son, the poetic atheist or sceptic, and his stupid and brutal father, sees with weak hesitation of mind his attachment to the ferryman's daughter, Mabel Groves, whom she thinks worthy of him, but likely to embarrass his outward fortunes and his relations with his father. She therefore, of course, exacts on her death-bed the silliest promise that she could exact—that her son will, at all events delay his marriage till he is twenty-five,

her purpose being, as she carefully explains to Gerald, to pre- vent his deciding prematurely, and without experience, on his future destiny. Gerald catches the idea, gives the solemn promise, and immediately (at the age of seventeen) engages him- self to Mabel by way of fulfilling it, explaining, however, that lie cannot marry, in consequence of his vow, till he is twenty-five.

He then quarrels with his father, and goes to London. Some years after, Mabel's father dies ; she herself is persecuted by the machinations of Gerald's father, who wants to get her married out of his son's way, and flies to London, where she is enticed into a disreputable house, and rescued by Gerald in the critical moment. He is too poor to support her separately ; but this high-minded young man conceives himself bound by his promise to his mother not yet to marry her, and so he hits upon the happy device of living with her as his wife till the time ex- pires, — thus vindicating his poetic insight into the spirit of a promise, by combining all that his mother wished him to avoid with a literal observance of her injunction which she would have thought singularly wicked.

After this lofty act of self-sacrifice to the mother's memory, the melodrama, if this wretched romance can be called even melodrama, begins. "The incidents of the tale," says Mr. Macgrigor Allan, "are imaginary, and have been wrought with an eye to future adaptation to the stage." That, indeed, is ex- ceedingly plain ; but the incidents are probably too unnatural to succeed even there ; no simple dramatist could make anything of them even if he ventured to take the dramatic conceptions out of Mr. Macgrigor Allan's hands. Gerald's wicked cousin, a hypo- critical clergyman called Mr. Covert, who wants the estate, who

proenied his expulsion from Oxford, and is stated to have a lofty intellect, of which he gives, of course, no trace at all, persuades

Gerald's father to shut the son up for a time as non comp.:4.

And the curious mixture between the expedients taken from a recent mad-doctor case, and the legal powers of a father over a minor, by which this is effected, is one of the most triumphant hits of the book. While Gerald is shut up, Mr. Covert works upon Miliam's mind to persuade her that her duty to Gerald requires her to resign him, nay, to reconcile him to his father's intentiona

for him. This is done with so much success that she actually feigns to be a prostitute to alienate Gerald's affections, then

takes strychnine, immediately repents of her act, gets the Chars ing Cross Hospital doctors partially to pump it up again, vindi- cates her character in her last moments, and dies in Gerald's

arms with her head shaved (why do they shave the head to counteract the effects of strychnine?) with magnificent effect.. Here is sensation scene the first.

The second is greater yet. Gerald alters immediately after her death, becomes apparently prudent, conservative and time- serving, proposes to the Earl's daughter, for whom he had been destined by his father, and who had had some share in the plot against Miriam, and is accepted ; lie fixes the first anniversary of her death for his wedding, conditions with his wife to spend their first night in London, and is found by her at midnight lying half- poisoned under Miriam's picture. He starts up, taxes her with

Miriam's murder, tells her that lie rowed by Miriam's death-bed to carry out her (Miriam's) original purpose in her moral and physical suicide by marrying the woman she.had intended him to marry that it might not appear that she had died'" in vain,"— snatches at his burning bosom, finds the action of the poison too

slow, and shoots himself before his new wife at the foot of Miriam's- picture, leaving her dabbled in his blood. Thus nobly does lie carry into practical effect Miriam's self-sacrifice, and vindicate it from having been in vain. He is, indeed, supposed to have a "lesion of the brain ;" but the lesion of the brain seems through- out the previous year to have had a rather sobering and restraining effect than otherwise.

The third and final sensation scene shows Gerald's widow in deep black, receiving an offer from Mr. Covert (now enriched with

Gerald's estate), in her boudoir, with both Gerald's picture and Miriam's before her. She charges him with his iniquities, he claims her as his accomplice in them and, therefore, for his wife,— and she shrieking, falls into the arms of Covert, and is left at the close in a state in which her reason is doubtful.

Such is the delicate framework of the tale in which a character supposed to be modelled on the type, and connected with the actual incidents of Shelley's life, is the principal figure 1 The literary crime is the greater, that there was quite enough of morbid excitement about Shelley's life to render the un- healthy part of it food for unpleasant thoughts and fertile in false suggestions. If this wretched claptrap had been written about a mere fanciful picture, it would have been worth no one's while to condemn it ; or if it had been written concerning a mm high above all shadows, it would have been worth no one's while to condemn it. But written, as it, is, concerning a great mind open to the imputation of visionary and morbid thoughts, a great mind with certain weak aspects on which literary mud will stick, we cannot too harshly condemn this attempt to give interest and

force to the silliest and vulgarest of modern coups de theatre, by grouping the gaping actors in it round a figure more foolish than any of them, yet intentionally identified with much that is very noble, though very imperfect, in English biography ; and with yet more that can never in its way be rivalled by the greatest master of English song.