STUDIES FROM LIFE.*
This is one of a class of books which are read with difficulty, and closed with the conviction that the time spent over them has been frittered away. It consists of a number of short, discursive essays all of which have been published before, although no notice from the author or publisher is candid enough to acknowledge that fact. It must have been in one of those fits of enthusiasm which sometimes. mislead the most experienced writers, that the author of " John. Halifax" consented to the re-issue of what ought to have been left in the decent obscurity of minor magazines. Essays are always valu- able .and always welcome when they are stored with the fruits of a, reflective mind, and a matured judgment, but there is a spurious' form - of essay writing which leads to gfed6r disappointment -cud • Studies from Life. By the Author of John Halifax. Minn and Macke* • - waste of time than all the bad novels published throughout the sea- son. It is the misfortune of the lady who has written these Studies from Life, that she has nothing more to say upon any subject she has taken up than would occur to ninety-nine common-place persons out of a hundred. We feel as we wander through page after page of her book, that we are surrounded with the atmosphere of an infant
schoolroom. It is all milk for babes. We turn over the chaff, willing to be satisfied with even a grain of wheat, but very rarely does even this moderate reward attend our pains. This is the more surprising, inasmuch that the writer is evidently fully conscious of the responsibility which rightfully attaches teen author of reputation—never write except when you really have something to say, and be careful not to publish a book likely to endanger your reputation, is her own advice. We have heard it before, as we have heard most other things in these essays, but the utter uselessness of the warning is curiously illustrated by the appear- ance of this very volume. When did an author ever take the truth seriously to heart that he was " written out ?" He is always the very last to perceive that his powers are declining, that the tree will blossom and bear no longer, and that the world ever turns its head away when it can from the wreck of genius. The lesson must always be a hard and bitter one, and nothing but the decisive test of waning popularity can force a writer who has been a favourite to receive it. Nor is it always possible to affirm with certainty that an author has nothing more to tell us worth hearing—for instance, judging solely from the merits of the book before us it would be no unfair criticism, but the honest truth, to allege that it gave evidence of waning talent, and that hereafter the writer would be deserving of little attention. But j it is more charitable, and upon the whole more just, to limit the scope of such a remark to writings of the same kiud as that in which the failure is exhibited. There is no reason to suppose that the lady who wrote "John Halifax" will never be able to produce a tolerably good novel again, but we are perfectly justified in coming to the con- clusion that as an essayist it would be a mistake to expect anything from her. Even if she improved considerably upon the present volume her style and her cast of thought would render her essays inferior to those amateur disquisitions occasionally found in provincial magazines.
In one of these papers entitled " Silence for a Generation," men of letters generally are taken severely to task, and treated with a good deal of the kind of satire which ladies delight in, for the sin of writing merely for money. Although there is nothing new in the author's remarks, there is much that is true, but motives of polite- ness alone could restrain the use of the to quoque argument. Why these studies from nature were originally made we have perhaps no right to inquire, but could the author seriously believe that the world would be benefited by the republication of her mild and amiable, but exceedingly vapid and useless reflections P She says more than any one can want to know about roman noses, curly hair, dress, children, love of talk, and other subjects upon which her sex are recognized authorities, but a Barmecide feast such as this can satisfy no one. Almost all the essays prove that the writer has fallen into the too common mistake of imagin- ing that the incidents of her early life must be of absorbing interest to the world. This, in fact, is the very groundwork of five-sixths of the papers. It has never occurred to her that it is an odious infliction to be compelled to listen to dull stories of how the childhood of others was spent, and even when she tells us that she used to wear " those substantial under-vestments which we were then not ashamed to call "trousers," we cannot say that our interest or our admiration has been very powerfully excited. In the common relationships and daily intercourse of life past reminiscences may sometimes possess a certain charm, and at any rate it is our duty to listen to their recital with courtesy; but no author has a right to take the same liberty with our patience. Granting even that the public desired to know all about the early days of the author of certain tales, is this the kind of information that would satisfy them P—" 0, sacred blue pinafore ! so warm, light, and comfortable— put off or on in a minute—allowing full liberty to run, jump, climb, scramble or crawl, creating a sublime indifference to dirt or tears— that is, fractures—I have never seen any modern garment appro- priated to children's wear which could at all be compared to this costume of my youth. In it we went out to play. Our play place was the garden, the green," and so on. This is all very like the favourite story of Tommy and Harry in the spelling books, but it is inferior to that composition in that there is no point or moral in it. In. another essay upon children's books it was reasonable to expect, seeing that the essayist is a lady, some hints or suggestions that might be of future service ; but in the very third page we drift once more into the quagmire of personal recollections, and the writer tells us what she thought of "Jack the Giant Killer" and "Robinson Crusoe." At the best the writer can but be able to tell us very imperfectly the real opinions of her childhood, and in all probability she simply explains what she thinks they may have been, or were likely to be, for memory seldom enables people to recal their impressions of what they read at the age of five or six. Even here, therefore, in a province peculiarly the writer's own, she fails to make us any recompense for the trouble we take in following her erratic and inconsequential train of thought.
Hence we are no longer disappointed when we find subjects re- Turing the application of philosophy and logic in their treatment discussed in a chatty, gossiping, and thoroughly feminine manner. The essayist writes about war, " this our present war, bursting upon us suddenly," as she says, in much the same strain as that in which a- party of young .damsels would talk about it ; and we are even favoured with an introduction to the "officer" who has long been
surrounded with a halo of glory in schoolrooms. The scene is- laid in a train ; and a conversation takes place in which the author shares,
and of course gets decidedly the best of it, completely exti ng an unfortunate farmer who takes her for a dressmaker. Any Ciivil Service Commissioner who happened to read this book might find it worth while to give the paper entitled " War Sparkles" to candidates at an examination, and require an abstract to be made of it. The incidents might be docketed, but it would be almost impossible to say what are the views which the writer wishes to enforce. There is a. non-commissioned officer who has a very handsome face, every detail of which is minutely described, a commissioned officer who cries " aw, aw," after every word, the lady, and two or three others. They all talk arrant nonsense ; but the nonsense of the lady smites the agri- culturist sorely, and drives him discomfited from the field, while the "well-cut mouth and chin, delicate, yet extremely characteristic," et the soldier, alone save him from a similar fate. The boy officer, not being so good-looking as the other, is simply hustled contemptuously out of the carriage. The only conclusion we are asked to consider is, that the ladies of England neglected to do so much as they ought to have done for our wounded soldiers during the Crimean war, but we apprehend that her handsome friend could have led her to sounder notions on this point, and that few of those whom she pities will coincide with her opinion. There is a still weaker article, in which a young clergyman is reprimanded for sitting silent during a certain controversy upon religious matters, which took place in a train. The parson was " pale, fair-haired," with " features so delicately cut," Ike.. but he would not " do battle for the truth." The scoffers in the car- riage mocked to their hearts' content, and the clergyman still kept silence : "My mind was pondering over the pale young priest, and how strange it is that Truth, of itself so pure and strong, the very strongest thing in the whole world, should often be treated by its professors as if it were to brittle to bear handling, too tender to let the least breath of air blow upon it, too frail to stand the smallest contamination from without. Good God I thought, if Christians would only believe enough in their own faith to trust itself to itself—and to Thee."
This passage affords us a clear insight into the mind of the writer, while it presents a striking, but very fair, example, of a woman's logic. A young clergyman did not choose to take part in a vulgar brawl about religion, therefore he was afraid of declaring his opinions, and lacked "faith !" In the paper "About Mothers-in-Law," the writer is more reasonable ; she protests with earnestness against the absurd jeers and aspersions levelled at an ill-used portion of her sex, and ob- serves with truth that "it is no unfrequeut thing to see instances of a man's being kindly, even affectionately, attached to his wife's mother,. and she to him." This essay is the solitary plum in the pudding— the rest is "leather and prunella." We find a long rhapsody about a "Lost Cat," a few comments on Sir Charles Grandison, and some sentimental reflections about nothing in particular, but the thought becomes more and more attenuated, and the word-spinning more wearisome as we proceed. If it can be of any advantage to society to learn that the author had a cat, "the first-born of his mother," whose " tail was his weak point," and whose " morals were unexceptiou- able," then we may admit that there is a hidden purpose in these Studies from Life, and leave mankind to take the full benefit of it. At present we cannot but think the writer would have best consulted her reputation by suffering her "occasional pieces"—non lam ovum. ovo simile—to rest beneath the shadow of a respectable anonyme. As the author of several works above the average in merit, she will herself eventually regret having sanctioned the re-publicati on before us.
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