BOOKS.

PHINEAS REDUX.* THE rumour of Phineas Finn's return to the political world after his brief married life with Mary Flood Jones and his temporary exile in the Irish Civil Service, had long preceded even the appearance of the first number of this entertaining chronicle in the Graphic. Indeed, we all of us know those of Mr. Trollope's characters who appear and reappear in the main line of his social tradition, so much better than we know ninety-nine hundredths of our own friends, that if by any chance we can gather news of their future fortunes, however indirectly, from the one depository of the secret of their existence, there is none of us who would not avail himself of that opportunity far more eagerly than of any of the ordinary sources of social gossip. It is even possible that there are some of us who keep a minuter hold on the details of Mr. Trollope's traditions than the chief authority himself. For instance, there may be those who have observed with some surprise, on the opening of this second chronicle of Phineas Finn's life, that his office as a permanent Irish civil servant imposed on him a re- sidence in the Irish capital, though the previous story left him a Poor-law inspector in the county of Cork, and gave a special official intimation that his residence ought to be in Cork. We mention this merely to show how fondly Mr. Trollope's readers cherish minute details of his heroes and heroines, of which he himself is apt to be forgetful. Whether the first Mrs. Finn—poor Mary Flood Jones—spent her brief year of happiness in Cork or in Dublin will matter little to anyone now ; possibly Mr. Finn was transferred from Cork to the capital by the chief of the department, and our author's historical accuracy was thereby justified. But if the imagination of any of his readers has occu- pied itself with the exact whereabouts of poor little Mary Flood Jones, we need hardly say that something more than interest, eager curiosity, must have been excited in all who had heard the rumours of Phineas Finn's return to political life ; of the murder of Mr. Bon- teen, the meddling Treasury subordinate of the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Plantagenet Palliser) ; of the suspicion and imminent peril of life and fame incurred by Phineas Finn in that matter ; of Madame Max Goesler's enterprising journey to Prague in search of evidence as to the real murderer, and its twofold result ; of the bitter troubles of Lady Laura Kennedy ; of the death of the Duke of Omnium and the succession of Lady Glencora to the honour of a duchess's title and privileges ; and last, not least, of the great Parliamentary struggle between Mr. Daubeny and Mr. Gresham as to the disestablishment of the English Church. Nor will any one who bad heard beforehand rumours of these interesting events feel anything but rich intellectual gratification in perusing the minute chronicle of them. We do not mean that there are no defects in this, any more than in any other of Mr. Trollope's entertaining stories. As usual, his women are apt to be too 'loud.' Lady Glencora was always audacious in manner and speech, and even when promoted to be a duchess, she is probably entitled to "snap her fingers," and to say she does not care as much as a snap of the fingers for the young man for whose cause she is pleading. But a woman so clever would certainly have known more of the details of public life than the Duchess. The scene in which she proposes to bribe the jury, and do all manner of impossible things, to get Phineas Finn acquitted, is extravagantly overdrawn. Again, Lady Laura Kennedy, generous, but never quite true to the highest of women's instincts, since she married

• Phincas Reduz. By Anthony Trollope. With Illustrations engraved on wood. London: Chapman and Hall. one man in order to help on another man whom she loved, in his career, may be perhaps not inaptly delineated as expressing the bitter sense of her disappointment in life by the continual use of overcoloured language, as when she says that "men are often false as hell, and then they are crafty as Lucifer." But it is hardly needful to make Violet Effiugham,—as she was in the earlier story, Lady Chiltern as she is in this,—talk such a decidedly 'loud' style, as when she observed (in the first part of this tale) that any man under seventy who told her she was pretty, ought to be "kicked out of the room," or remarks in this, that she "won't swear" that Miss Palliser writes for the Times ; or to make Mrs. Bonteen, even after the murder of her husband, indulge in such very violent language against the young politician who is accused of the crime, for surely Englishwomen, especially if they be of the bourgeois class, are not made wildly vindictive by true grief of the deepest kind, and Mrs. Bonteen talks like an Italian engaged in a vendetta or a Red Indian on the war-path. It seems to us indeed clear that Mr. Trollope gives a generally too 'loud' tone to the characters of his women, and that he succeeds best with those women who, like Lady Glencora, are distinguished by a preference for brusque and piquant rattle. Nothing can be, on the whole, happier than the picture of Lady Glencora in this book, wherein she becomes Duchess of Omnium, though her manners, when in the retirement of her private interviews with her husband the Duke, are surely a little too fast and bounceable. For instance, when she says to the Duke, "I'll tell you what. If he [Phineas Finn] is passed over, I'll make such a row that some of you shall hear it," we think there is more of slang than of piquancy in her language ; and Lady Glencora, though brusque and piquant, should never be slangy. But when she threatens Barrington Erie that "if this ends badly for Mr. Finn, I'll wear mourning to the day of my death. I'll go to the Drawing-room in mourning, to show what I think of it," then she is the true Lady Glencora whom we have been taught to know ever since she was Lady Glencora M'Cluskie, and was called "Lady Glencow-rer " by Mr. Bott. By the way, speaking of Mr. Bott, has not Mr. Trollope really restored Mr. Bott to us in his last two novels, under the more respectable, and as the grammarians say of a lengthened and beconsonanted form of a verb, the stronger form, of Mr. Bonteen ? Mr. Bonteen, like Mr. Bott, is a Radical who calculates sums for the Right Hon. Plantagenet Palliser, and goes down to Matching Priory to do so. Both of them are a little disposed to take mean advantages, and are generally odious to Lady Glencora and to the reader ; and of Mr. Bott especially one would have said that the appropriate ending to his career would be the tragical ending here awarded to Mr. Bonteen with the general verdict of 'served him right' on the part of the political world. But for some reason beat known to Mr. Trollope, Mr. Bott has vanished out of his gallery, and Mr. Bonteen has taken his place. Is it solely because Lady Glencora, when she communicated to her friend that one of the spies on her proceedings, Mr. Bott, was going to marry the other spy, Mrs. Marsham, committed herself to the position that Mr. Bott in thus marrying a lady old enough to be his mother, did it only "to regain his footing with Mr. Palliser, and Planta- genet will never speak to him again "? If that were the only reason, we think it possible that Mr. Palliser, for political reasons, might have spoken to Mr. Bott again, and that Mr. Bott was, at all events, quite good enough to be murdered in this story by the Rev. Joseph Emilius. One does not need in fiction a redundancy of such materials as Mr. Bott, with alight shades of difference, even though there be actually such a redundancy in real life. Indeed, we have reason to believe that some of Mr. Trollope's readers confuse the personalities of Mr. Bott and Mr. Bonteen, which is more than just to the former and unjust to the latter hero ; hence we submit that there was a want of sufficient reason for the double invention.

The new story seems to us in every way even the superior of the old. There is more body in the plot, and more subtlety in the conceptions, though not perhaps more finish in the execution. The picture of Mr. Kennedy's rigid and conventional mind giving way under the pressure of shame and jealousy, till he attempts the life of the man whom he knows that his wife prefers to him- self, is an exceedingly fine one. The cunning and vindictive- ness, the mixed religious and personal gloom, the pride and the jealousy, the stupidly monotonous repetitions of his demand that his wife shall do her duty by returning to his roof, and the avarice which seems to grow upon him as his mind fails, are all painted with even more than Mr. Trollope's usual power. Nor is the picture of his wife and the unhappy growth of that passion by suppressing which in her youth, under prudential motives, she had grievously wronged both the man she rejected and the man she preferred, less powerful, though it is even more painful-.

We feel some doubt whether, in a character evidently so proud as was Lady Laura's originally, there could have been so repeated a confession of her state of mind to one who had long ceased to be her lover. The powerful scene in which she confesses her continued love to Phineas Finn near Dresden is natural enough. But after her husband's death, when she knew that Phineas bad no thought whatever of renewing his suit to her, could she have continued to throw herself, as it were, at his feet in the way she here does ? We believe Mr. Trollope knows a great deal more of human nature than the present reviewer, and he may be quite right in the delineation of what seems to us the fault of a very powerful picture. Unques- tionably the drawing of Madame Max Goeslees comparative self- control and reserve,—we must remember that she, too, had, in the former tale, ventured on offering herself and her fortune to Phineas,—makes the portrait of Lady Laura Kennedy still more striking. Madame Max is one of Mr. Trollope's most graceful and carefully studied characters. With just enough of the- adventuress to have an element of calculation in her nature, and quite sufficient resource and acuteness to be worth more in the ordinary concerns of life than almost any of the per- sonages into competition with whom she comes, the tenderness of her heart gives a true fascination to the character. We may venture to hope that, though it will be difficult to recognise Madame Max under her new title as Mrs. Phineas Finn, we shall be made familiar with her in that new relation in some future- story. The figure is altogether too good not to take its place- in Mr. Trollope's regular gallery. We cannot say that, on the whole, we admire the hero more in this tale than we did in the last. There is great subtlety in the picture of his nervous break-down after his acquittal, and in the preparation for it before the accusation, when we see how morbidly susceptible he is to- the attacks on him which result in his exclusion from office. We- are perfectly aware that it is this sensitive element in him which- both endears him to women, and, to some extent, makes him fail in what we should call the manlier side of life. And we have nothing to say against the picture, which is altogether life-like- and true. But while we thoroughly admire the painting, we cannot say that the man himself grows on us. The weakness in him is, very properly, made excessively prominent by the accusa- tion, the trial, and its results. And it is therefore difficult to- sympathise with the women in their very natural and dramatic- enthusiasm for him.

Of some of the Parliamentary sketches it would be difficult to- speak too highly. Mr. Daubeny's speech to his constituents, giving the first hint of his intention to "educate his party" into- a disestablishment of the English Church, and the way he brings- his reluctant Cabinet—all but two members—round to his view of the case, may be a little exaggerated, but, if it be, it is an exag- geration of Mr. Disraeli's political taetique painted with so much humour as to be the better for the exaggeration. Nor is Mr.

Gresham,—of course mainly intended for Mr. Gladetone,—less skilfully painted in the chief scene of the Parliamentary struggle.

There is, however, a little too much of the various debates,—too

much of the duller bits of them, which a novelist is bound not to paint unless he can make them amusing,!--nor is there any indica-

tion given us of that ability in Mr. Finn's speech which would justify his friends in their congratulations. We differ, too, from Mr Trollopeas to his impression that competition for patronage,— an eager craving to have "the slicing of the cake," as he calls it, —is so great a mainspring in party politics as he thinks. Certainly last year Mr. Disraeli's party might have compelled him to take the cake and slice it, had they wished. As far as we know, they rather compelled him to refuse it.

We cannot leave this fascinating story without a special refer- ence to the reappearance of our old friend, the Old-Bailey barrister, Mr. Chaffanbrass, who defends Phineas Finn with even more than his traditional ability. There are one or two of Mr.

Trollope's finest touches in the sketch of the skilful, dirty, old man, exerting all his powers to get Phineas Finn acquitted, while yet himself more than half convinced of his guilt. Phineas makes a considerable moral impression upon him by his instructions as to the way he desires to be defended, but does not convince him of his innocence. This is what Phineas says :—

" Here I am, and to-morrow I shall be tried for my life. My life will be nothing to me, unless it can be made clear to all the world that I anr innocent I would be sooner hung for this,—with the certainty at my heart that all England on the next day would ring with the assurance of my innocence, than be acquitted and afterwards be looked upon as a murderer." Phineas, when he was thus speaking, had stepped out into • the middle of the room, and stood with his head thrown bask, and his

right hand forward. Mr. Chaffanbrass, who was himself an ugly, dirty old man, who had always piqued himself on being indifferent to appear- ance, found himself struck by the beauty and grace of the man whom he now saw for the first time. And he was struck, too, by his client's eloquence, though he had expressly declared to the attorney that it was his duty to be superior to any such influence.

And this is the feeling he inspires in Mr. Chaffanbrass :— When Mr. Chaffanbrass left the prison he walked back with Mr. Wickerby to the attorney's chambers in Hatton Garden, and he lingered for awhile on the Viaduct expressing his opinion of his client. "He's not a bad fellow, Wickerby."—" A very good sort of fellow, Mr.

Chaffanbrass."—"I never did,—and I never express an opinion of my own as to the guilt or innocence of a client till after the trial is over. But I have sometimes felt as though I would give the blood out of my veins to save a man. I never felt in that way more strongly than I do now."—" It'll make me very unhappy, I know, if it goes against him," said Mr. Wickerby.—" People think that the special branch of the profession into which I have chanced to fall is a very low one,—and I do not know whether, if the world were before me again, I would allow myself to drift into an exclusive practice in criminal Courts."—" Yours has been a very useful life, Mr. Chaffanbrass."- "But I often feel," continued the barrister, paying no attention to the attorney's last remark, "that ray work touches the heart more nearly than does that of gentlemen who have to deal with matters of property and of high social claims. People think I am savage,—savage to wit- nesses."—" You can frighten a witness, Mr. Chaffanbrass."—" It's just the trick of the trade that you learn, as a girl learns the notes of her piano. There's nothing in it. You forget it all the next hour. But when a man has been hung whom you have striven to save, you do remember that. Good morning, Mr. Wickerby. I'll be there a little before ten. Perhaps you may have to speak to me."

In the middle of his defence, when Mr. Chaffanbrass has just been putting very strongly the improbability that Phineas could have invented in five minutes' time such a murderous plot as was actually executed, the Court adjourns for lunch, and then the private reflections of Mr. Chaffanbrass are given us :—

"And then Mr. Chaffanbrass, who had been speaking for nearly four hours, retired to a small room and there drank a pint of port wine. While he was doing so Mr. Serjeant Birdbott spoke a word to him, but he only shook his head and snarled. He was telling himself at the moment how quick may be the resolves of the eager mind,—for he was convinced that the idea of attacking Mr. Bentsen had occurred to Phineas Finn after he had displayed the life-preserver at the club-door ; and he was telling himself also how impossible it is for a dull, conscien- tious man to give accurate evidence as to what he had himself seen,— for he was convinced that Lord Fawn had seen Phineas Finn in the street. But to no human being had he expresssd this opinion ; nor would he express it,—unless his client should be hung."

These new lights on the character of our old friend Mr. Chaffan- brass, whom in previous novels Mr. Trollope has certainly not de- lighted to honour, are touches of real genius,—some few of the very many touches of genius which make the continuation of the story of Phineas Finn one of the most delightful as well as accurate of his marvellous pictures of our modern social life. It is an unfor- tunate disfigurement to a book of this high calibre, that the illustrations are so very bad,—the figures being quite without distinctive character, and further, presenting the unfortunate peculiarity that no one of them is apt even to resemble himself (or herself) as delineated in other engravings,—and that the misprints are so exceptionally numerous.