The Baronet in Corduroy. By Albert Lee. (Grant Richards. Gs.)—This
story is told by a humble friend of the heroine, the scene being laid in the early days of the eighteenth century. It is, indeed, in the Sacheverell riots that the heroine makes the un- lucky acquaintance of the "Baronet." The style hardly suits the time. We are not purists in this matter, but it is startling to find Swift, Defoe, Steele, and Addison described ass" quaternion of free lances in the world of literature." Addison, too, a "free lance " ! The story is told with some spirit, but much of it is a dreary record of wickedness and misery. The complication at the end is not, to our mind, a happy contrivance. We may suggest that the selection of a title for Eleuor's second husband is not a good one. The Earl of Dalkeith of those days was the son of the Duke of Monmouth, and married a daughter of the Earl of Rochester. Whether he was alive in 1714 we cannot say at the moment of writing, but he must have been about forty years a age.
Previous page
