BOOKS.
THE WIZARD'S SON.*
Tins is a difficult story to review, on account of the strange way in which its merits and demerits are mixed throughout. Considered simply as a novel, it is one of the very best that Mrs. Oliphant has produced—or, in other words, one of the best novels in the language. The heroine, Oona Forrester, is ideally charming; the hero, Lord Erradeen—though injured by that trace of feebleness, of self-will, unregulated either by principle or intellect, which Mrs. Oliphant sees in every man—is care- fully studied, and is alive; and the minor characters are, as usual, admirable. We do not know where to look for a sketch more perfect than that of Mrs. Forrester, the vain, shallow- brained old beauty of Loch Houran, with her kindly heart and perfect breeding, and deep love for all who belong to herself; while Katie Williamson, the millionaire's pretty daughter, so conscious of wealth, and so little befooled by it with her bright sense and clear eyes, and utter directness, and simplicity which is not simple, is, so far as we know, quite new. No one surpasses Mrs. Oliphant in describing, what is so constantly seen in real life and so seldom in literature, earthiness which has no taint in it, a girl who wants to win the best from life, and to obtain promotion, and to enjoy herself every day, and yet is as completely without badness in her nature as without silliness in her brain. The honest, undecided factor ; the worthy old minister, with his gentle tolerance ; the old servant, who is filled with superstition, yet fearless in his fears,—all these are admirably drawn amidst a scene, the waters and banks of Loch Houran, of which it is a pleasure only to read. Scott could not make locale more real to his reader than Mrs. Oliphant does in her latest book. Nor could a difficult and painful, yet natural and frequent relation, between mother and son be better sketched than is the relation between Mrs. Methven and her son : she all love, yet driving him half crazy with her tactless interference and inability to understand his moods ; he full of love too, yet fuller of half-sullen resolution to be free. The plot, too, is exciting ; and though the end is clear from the first, curiosity to know how that end will be secured holds the reader enchained from the first page to the last. We have read The Wizard's Son twice, once in snippets and once as a whole, and our interest has never flagged.
It is not thus, however, that this novel mast be judged. That Mrs. Oliphant can write a charming story, rising in chapters to something much higher, and occasionally to a display of true literary genius of a kind which we at least rank high, all who have studied her work know well. But she has here attempted something demanding yet loftier powers,—the use of machinery avowedly supernatural, the introduction of a being who in many essential points is human, yet not human, who does things, for example, that man as we know him could not do, who is gifted with the serenity we attribute to the immortals, and who governs, or tries to govern, not only the fates, but the wills of all to whom he stands in the relation of progenitor. The true hero of The Wizard's Son is the Wizard, the ancestor of the Methvens of the Loch, who, centuries ago, first built the great- ness of the house, who has won from science the secret of deathlessness, the secret of thought-reading, even at a distance, the secret of movement by volition like Homer's Gods, and the secret of invisibility,—and who uses all these powers to play the part of Mephistophiles, and induce his descendants, by a • The Wizard's Son. By Mrs. Oliphant. London: Macmillan. mixture of advice and threat, to aggrandise steadily the fortunest of his race. This is his interest in living, not only on Loch Houran, which he only visits fitfully, but it is hinted, in other regions, where other descendants have wandered or have been born ; and he pursues his object remorselessly, advising always the course from which profit comes, careless of right and wrong,. or, when necessary, of human suffering. By force of will and, earthly wisdom, he masters each descendant in succession, and drives him on his soulless career towards ever-expand- ing prosperity, until he encounters in the Lord Erradeen of the story a lad who, though weak, and even vicious, has yet in him something—the vague desire of a higher path and a nobler end—which forces him, though he fears till he nearly loses his reason, to resist. When an author offers to the world so audacious a conception as this, she must be judged by her failure or success in working the conception out ; and it is with regret and reluctance that we say of the author of A Beleaguered' City—far the best prose poem issued in our time—that her suc- cess in this effort has not been perfect. The figure of the War- lock Lord is, indeed, splendidly conceived. He is no vulgar wizard, but a grand and gracious gentleman, who has lived on, whose mind has grown with its vast knowledge and vaster experience, till even when it counsels evil, it is from a wider perception than that of man, a perception as to the material results of given action akin to that of Providence. He recommends, for example, cruel evictions which would be ruin- ous to the morale of the man who sanctioned them, but sees that in those evictions would be the germ of happiness for the families evicted. He wishes no evil for evil's sake; prefers, when there is a choice, that his descendant should be good, for good- ness removes half the difficulties of life; is in no respect a devil', or the slave of a devil, but only a man in whom width of intelli- gence, unaccompanied by any spiritual gain, or rather accom- panied by spiritual decay, has killed out the perception of right and wrong, except as differences like red and blue. He is not without consciousness that there is a loftier ideal than his own, or a faint shame within himself, such as he feels and half confesses when, only once in the story, he resorts to a device of the lower magic, influencing Lord Erradeen through power brought to bear upon his picture; but he deliberately keeps this. consciousness down :— "'You are taking (he says to his reluctant victim), I hope,, a less highflown view of the circumstances altogether. The absolute does not exist in this world. We must all be eon- tent with advantages which are comparative. I always re- gret,' he continued, resorting to heroic measures. To have. to do with some one who will hear and see reason, is a great relief. I follow the course of your thoughts with interest. They are all perfectly just ; and the conclusion is one which most wise men have arrived at. Men in general are fools. As a rule you are incapable of guiding yourselves ; but only the wise among you know it.'—' I have no pretension to be wise.'—' You are modest—all at once. So long as you are reasonable that will do. Adapt your life now to a new plan. The ideal is beyond your reach. By no fault of circumstances, but by your own, you have forfeited a great deal that is very captivating to the mind of youth, but very empty if you had. it all to-morrow. You must now rearrange your conceptions and find yourself very well off with the second best."
Lord Erradeen resists furiously, but only excites his companion's cynicism :—
" ' When you have taken my advice (as you will do presently) and have come down from your pinnacle and accepted what is the ordinary lot of mankind, you will find no longer any difficulty in living—as long as is possible ; you will not wish to shorten your life by a day.'—' And what is the ordinary lot of mankind ?' cried Walter,. feeling himself once more beaten down, humiliated, irritated by an ascendency which he could not resist.—' I have told you—the second best. In your case a wife with a great deal of wealth, and many other qualities, who will jar upon your imagination (an imagination. which has hitherto entertained itself so nobly !) and exasperate your temper perhaps, and leave your being what you call incomplete : but who will give you a great acquisition of importance, and set you at Peace with me. That alone will tell for much in your comfort ; and gradually your mind will be brought into conformity. You will consider subjects in general as I do—from a point of view which will not be individual. You will not balance the interests of the few miserable people who choose to think their comfort impaired, but will act largely for the continued benefit of your heirs and your pro- perty. You will avail yourself of my perceptions, which are more extended than your own, and gradually become the greatest land- owner, the greatest personage of your district ; able to acquire the- highest honours if you please, to wield the greatest influence. Come, you have found the other position untenable according to your own confession. Accept the practicable. I do not hurry you. Examine for yourself into the issues of your ideal—now that we have become friends, and understand each other so thoroughly—'—'I am no friend of yours. I understand no one, not even myself.'—' You are my son,' said the other, with a laugh. You are of my nature ; as you grow older you will resemble me more and more. You will speak
to your sons as I speak to you. You will point out these duties to them, as I do to you.'—' In everything you say,' cried Walter, 'I perceive that you acknowledge a better way. Your plans are the second best—you say so. Is it worth living so long only to know that you are embracing mediocrity after all, that you have nothing to rise to ? and yet you acknowledge it,' he said.—The stranger looked at him with a curious gaze. He who bad never shown the smallest emotion before grew slightly paler at this question : but he laughed before he replied. Yon are acute,' he said. You can hit the blot. But the question in hand is not my Character, but your practical career.'"
That is a new Mephistophiles,—a most original conception, thoroughly well worked out ; and yet it fails. The man with these grand powers, and this separate life, uses both like some small Jew tradesman. Mrs. Oliphant has made the mistake of giving this being a purpose so inconceivably small, that it appears by the side of his powers ridiculous. An intelligence like his, versed in all men's natures, full of all experiences, swelling with triumphs in the field of science, could not have striven through the ages only to give a Scottish laird a little more money. The end is too petty—so petty, that the reader's power of belief, which it is in- dispensable to evoke, fails at every page. If the Methvens, once owners of all Scotland, were to do something grand with their ownership, bad. or good,—but there is no such hint ; they are only to grow bigger, and richer, and grander, in the most vulgar sense, with every generation. That is an impossible end for a Mephistophiles to seek,—
" In Heaven ambition cannot dwell, Nor avarice in the vaults of Hell,
Earthly those passions of the Earth ;"
and the reader would even begin to ridicule, but for his apprecia- tion of the means taken to defeat the Warlock Lord. There Mrs. Oliphant, who has lost her perception of character for a moment—having perhaps studied the life of Scott till she fancies that Scott's poor end could have continued to be his end even had he acquired the wisdom of twenty men and the experience of hundreds—at once recovers her powers, and fights her Mephistophiles with a brain as subtle as his own. Her inner conception of him—forgotten for a moment in that earthy hint about the lamp and the picture—is that he an work only by mental influence upon a single mind linked with his own by the mystical, not understood but very real, tie of descent. How then will it be if the mind to be subdued is strengthened by the strength of another mind, become, through perfect love and complete knowledge, a part of itself. The singleness which is the condition of liability has disappeared. Can Satan succeed with Eve, if Eve loves Adam, and Adam knows and resists the evil influence P It is in love that Lord Erradeen finds the needful aid, and Mrs. Oliphant the opportunity for a love-story as beautiful and as original as has ever been painted, a story not spoiled by the fact that the natural relation of the sexes is inverted, and that no man can study Lord Erradeen without a faint contempt for his feminine clingingness to the stronger character. That is Mrs. Oliphant's permanent idea of the facts of the world; and false as it is, it is so permanent that it causes no more dis- turbance than any other mannerism in a great writer.
We accept it, as we accept George Eliot's occasional vein of tedious philosophising, as the personal mark which identifies and does not spoil the work. No one can read of Oona without ad- miration and sympathy for that mixed passion bf pity and devotion and true love which at the supreme moment gives her the courage that enables her to quell the Warlock Lord, and drive him, serene and grand still, but defeated, from the scene.
His defeat has incidents in it far too theatric for our taste, and we protest once more against the mystic lamp and its incendiary powers ; but still, the impelling force which drives Oona is a spiritual one, and it is because Lord Erradeen's mind has escaped, not because the lamp is broken, that the baffled wizard retires,—not, we fear, with much regret that he must suspend for a few years his supernatural endeavours to make Loch Houran a still more "rapidly improving" property.
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