RECENT NOVELS.* VERSATILITY of aptitude may be exhibited more strikingly
in monotony than in. variety of theme, and Mrs. Oliphant has of late been exhibiting her own wonderful versatility in this very effective way. In her two recent novels, The Cuckoo in the Nest and The Heir Apparent and the Heir Presumptive, and now, for the third time, in The Sorceress, she has chosen for her central figure a feminine adventuress who, having her own ends to gain, allows no scruples con- cerning means to stand as obstacles in the way by which she proposes to reach them. The third attempt is not the moat successful. When Miss Laura Lance really be- comes an actor in the present story by setting herself to marry that foolish zniol pig-headed elderly gentleman, Colonel Kingsward, she is admirable,—worthy to be com- pared with the great foundress of her tribe ; but while she remains an outsider, it must be said that she falls much * (1.) The Somme. By Mrs, Oliphant. 3 vols. London: E. v. White and Co.—(2, ) The Story of John Trovennich. By Walter O. Rhoades. 3 vols. London Macmillan and Co --(8.) Raja, the Juggler. By G. A. Honty. 3 vole. London : Matto and Windus.-14.) In a Promised Land. By M. A. Bengougli. 3 vols. London : R. Bentley and Son.--.(5.) Through Another Man', Epee. By Eleanor Holmes. I vols. London Hurst and Rlaokett.--(8.) An American Monte Cristo. By Julian Hawthorne. 2 vols. London : W. H. Allen and Co, below her predecessors in the novels just named. She is not represented as a person likely to be led into injudicious action by mere impulse, but rather as a woman who, in her devotion to the main chance, never loses her coolness of judgment; and yet, in her unsuccessful attempt to separate Aubrey Leigh and Beatrice Kingsward, she not only acts without adequate prompting, but deliberately exposes herself to the very danger by which, towards the close of the story, her cleverly laid scheme to entrap her elderly admirer is rendered all but abortive. Nor do we see any reason why she should have applied herself to the subjugation of the luckless Charlie, who, in the matter of folly, is a chip of the old block. Here, also, there was annoyance or scandal to be risked; and even so far-sighted a woman as Laura could not possibly have foreseen that her encouragement of the son would bring her into promising relations with the father. When, how- ever, her quick thought and resolve have gained the momentum imparted by a purpose in which her interests are really con- cerned, she is superb,—great in her hour of unthreatened suc- cess, and greater still in that much more trying hour when, brought face to face with the enemy to whom she has given her- self away, she retreats with colours that are still =lowered, though riddled with shot. If the Mise Lance of the first volume had been equal to the Miss Lance of the third, she would have been a sorceress indeed. As it is, she must be regarded as, on the whole, rather a fumbling schemer; and had the book depended upon her in the same way that The Cuckoo in the Nest depends upon Patty Hewitt, it would hardly have been a success. Happily this is not the case. While we are waiting for Miss Lance's sorcery, Colonel Kings- ward's fatuity snfficingly entertains us. It is splendidly rampant in his hostile intercourse with poor Aubrey ; and the stupid adherence to conventional religious proprieties by which he' hastens his wife's death is pathetically ludicrous, ludicrously pathetic. The Colonel is not entertaining by nature, being nothing more than a shallow, stupid, obstinate person with " views ; " but this is just the kind of man who can be made delightfully entertaining by Mrs. Oliphant's reticently satirical portraiture. We cannot think that The Sorceress is one of its author's best books ; but if we could have nothing worse than Mrs. Oliphant's second-best, what great contentment would be ours The Story of John Trevennick introduces us to a Faust and a Mephistopheles, and though Mephistopheles, alias Disney Roberts, is a very clever person, while Faust, alias John Trevennick, is, to say the least, more simple-minded than it is at all safe to be, we are happy to find that in the end Mephis- topheles is routed all along the line. Faust is a young and foolish Oxford man, who has no special craving for know- ledge, but a great craving for money, seeing that his debts are heavy and his father unsympathetic. In spite of his im- pecuniosity he keeps a yacht, and Mephistopheles suggests that his yacht may be profitably used for the importation of brandy that is not destined to pass through the Custom- house. After some natural struggles, Faust yields to the tempter, and for a time all goes prosperously ; but when things begin to look a little awkward, and when Mephisto- pheles finds himself attracted by the girl on whom Faust has fixed his affections, he thinks it may be well to discredit his disciple and rival by turning traitor, The act of treason is accomplished very cleverly ; but, as it turns out, not quite cleverly enough. It may, however, be regarded as certain. that Trevennick would never have been the winner in the game of skill to which Roberts has challenged him, had it not been for a looker-on in the person of a wonderful boy named Micky, whose forte is loyalty, and whose foible is in- discriminate fighting. Micky is also an artistic genius, and his talent for drawing is a rather important element in the plot ; but what use of it is made by Mr. Rhoades, readers must discover for themselves in the pages of The Story of John Trevennick. There is nothing in the novel that is in any way remarkable ; but it is a bright, interesting, and healthy book, which will wile away a few hours very pleasantly.
It is not the easiest thing in the world to write a good novel founded upon the events of the French Revolution or the Indian Mutiny. Even the crudest reproduction of typical incidents from these great tragical crises of history must be interesting—even enthralling—because the interest inheres in the events themselves, and it is impossible to eliminate it. On the other hand, this very fact creates a difficulty. The mere abundance of attractive material is confusing to the writer who would utilise it inventively, and the attainment of unity, proportion, symmetry, perspective, and all the other qualities essential to representative art is a veritable labour of Hercules. In .Rujub, the Juggler, Mr. Henty has produced a story two-thirds of which will be read with unflagging and growing interest; but in the matter of art, he is not a Hercu- lean victor. One gets the impression that, after undertaking his task, the author's courage failed him, for he is wearisomely long in getting under way, and he seems anxious to postpone his real task to the latest possible moment. The first volume is as drill as anything written by Mr. Henty possibly could be. It is a long-drawn-out prologue, with so little interest either of character or of incident that it might easily have been condensed into fifty pages, and would have gained infinitely by the condensation. With the outbreak of the Mutiny the movement quickens, or rather begins, and the best of the scenes of action have plenty of spirit ; but even here the book is not quite satisfactory. Mr. Henty seems to congratulate himself on having got hold of a very good thing in his con- ception of the character of Bathurst,—a man of remarkable courage, but with a congenital horror of the sound of fire- arms, the effects of which have fixed upon him the stigma of cowardice. A conception of this kind is quite legitimate material, but it requires to be treated with a light hand ; and Mr. Henty pounds away at Bathurst's physico-psychological idiosyncrasy until we are heartily tired of it. Then, too, Rujub's mysterious hanky-panky is so very unimpressive as to make it clear that the region of the preternatural is not the place where the author feels at home ; and altogether, in spite of the really effective treatment of certain episodes, Rujub, the Juggler, seems to leave a good deal to be desired.
There have been exponents of the theory that the proportion of happy marriages would be larger than it is if men and women were mated not by mutual choice, but by the passion- less selection of the Lord Chancellor. This theory does not seem to be held by the author of the very powerful novel, In a Promised Land. True, no occupant of the Woolsack comes into the story, but the leaders of the obscure sect of Primi- tive Gospellers have for poor Sarah Bowman and Mattis Williams a spiritual authority to which no Lord Chancellor could lay claim. From childhood to young-womanhood they have been kept in the oloistral seclusion of the school estab- lished for the education of the daughters of the missionaries of the brotherhood, and are suddenly informed that they have been chosen to go out to South Africa, and to become the wives of two young labourers in that portion of the vineyard. The story of the two marriages, and of what followed there- upon, is the treatment of a burning question from a new point of view ; but the novel has other virtues than that of mere freshness. Hero and there the structure of the story may show signs of inexperience, but they are of no real importance, and the situations which give the book its peculiar character are not simply strong and effective as dramatic crises : they are characterised by a moral and spiritual insight which raises them far above the level of ordinary fiction,—even of ordinary good fiction. The mere locality of the novel suffices to recall Miss Schreiner's sombre masterpiece, and there is at least one scene in the new book—the lonely encounter between Jesse Runciman and his evil genius Westoby—which will not suffer by comparison with the strongest passages in The Story of an African Farm. Indeed, Runciman, the White man with Negro blood in his veins, the weak, sensuous, emotional ecstatic, who can rise to any height of spiritual feeling and fall to any depth of moral baseness, is one of the most impressive portraits that we have recently met with in fiction. In one striking chapter there is a passage which portrays him with the swift accuracy of a snap-shot photo- graph :—" It was pretty evident that Jesse Runciman was getting worked up. It is but the commonest justice to state the fact in this way : he was not in the least working himself up ; to attain any conceivable height of excitement he had never required anything further than just to let himself go." Runciman himself would suffice to confer intellectual distinc- tion upon any novel in which he appeared; but Westoby and Sarah Arkwright, especially the latter, would almost serve the same purpose, and their last struggle for the soul of the fallen but yet not lost man, is a situation which can hardly be overpraised. We might say much more. Enough, how- ever, has been said to indicate the character of In a Promised Land. From what one hears in casual conversation, it seems reasonable to draw the inference that many people are in- dined to think that a reviewer's opinion concerning a book can be gathered not merely from what he says, but also from the space which he occupies in saying it,—that, roughly speaking, half a column implies chill tolerance, and a whole column warm admiration. This mechanical inch-measurement of appreciation may sometimes hit the mark, but it misses it much more frequently. Here, for example, is the novel, Through Another Man's Eyes, which is decidedly above the average level of minor fiction, being a very well-planned and well-written story, with an interesting narrative-scheme, some fairly successful character-drawing, and a pleasant air of culture ; but though it is a book which can honestly be praised, it does not lend itself in any way to elaborate com- ment. What it does is very well done ; but it is the kind of thing that has been done too often for a new doing of it to arouse much intellectual interest. The various expedients for carrying on the story, especially those which through three volumes separate Colonel Gwynne and Magdalen Dumaresq, are terribly hackneyed, and even when they were fresh they had no great value ; but Miss Holmes certainly makes the best of them. The story of the ill-fated marriage of Lizzie Pitt is another treatment of a well-worn theme; but here, again, there is executive skill which partly atones for the want of freshness. There is, in short, nothing to be said of Through Another Man's Eyes, except that it is a very creditable specimen of conventional work.
Even a writer of the unmistakable cleverness of Mr. Julian Hawthorne displays a courage which most people will incline to call temerity in giving to a story the title, An American Monte Cristo. The Monte Cristo who was not an American has for so long stood head and shoulders above all other heroes of romantic and impossible adventure, that an attempt to pro- vide him with a rival seems almost impudently audacious. It is, however, the safest as well as the fairest course not to accuse Mr. Julian Hawthorne of impudent audacity, or, indeed, of anything else, until the end of his second volume has been reached. As no one expects him to prove a Dumas, no one is likely to be disappointed ; and most people will be pleasantly surprised at the amount of Dumas-like inventiveness that has found its way into the story of Keppel Darke. The murder of Harry Trent, the marvellous escape of the innocent convict, the still more marvellous series of events which put him into possession of the imperial millions, the return in disguise to the scene of his humiliation, and the orientally magnificent surroundings of the scene in which he unmasks Trent's real murderer, are only the salient points of a story every detail of which testifies to the success with which Mr. Julian Hawthorne has looted the treasure- houses of sensationalism. That An American Monte Cristo is not high art is certain ; but there are many people who care nothing about high art, and only demand that a book shall keep them awake. They are certainly not likely to fall asleep over Mr. Julian Hawthorne's latest romance.
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