CURRENT LITERATURE.
Within the Precincts. By Mrs. Oliphant. 3 vols. (Smith and Elder.)—We like this novel better than, to judge from some criticisms we have seen, the public does. It is not the best of Mrs. Oliphant's, and it happens to contain a character intended to be outrageously vulgar, and, we think, in spite of that intention, overdrawn. The Polly of real life would not have been so unendurable, would have had some geniality, or some devotion to her gentleman husband, or some quality in her to account for her elevation. Polly has nothing, and is therefore almost disgusting. 13ut apart from Polly, the story is exceedingly clever, contains a dozen characters living under peculiar circumstances—in high-class almshouses, in fact—and so hit off that we see how the circumstances have affected them ; and one character, Laurence Despard, which faintly as it is shaded in, is admirable in its originality. The book is pervaded by a sub-acid humour which gives it flavour, and though the plot is not equal to some Mrs. Oliphant has conceived, the ddnouement is unexpected enough to surprise the reader, and yet natural besides. A little more of the solid sense which Mrs. Oliphant loves to attribute to her heroines would have done Lottio Despard good, in the book as well as in fact, —but then she is of the artist organisation.
Previous page
