MRS. OLIPHANT.
MRS. OLIPHANT'S marvellous industry impeded the public recognition of her still more marvellous gifts. From early womanhood, before she was quite twenty-one, she determined to make a large income by her pen, and, favoured by the early appreciation of Mr. Colburn and Mr. Blackwood, and by a power of steady, persistent work which exceeded even Anthony Trollope's, she succeeded, pouring out a mass of liters- tare which, if decently printed, would fill, we believe, more than a hundred and fifty volumes. Few succeeding numbers of Blackwood's Magazine ever appeared without a contribution from her, she often published two novels a year, and she wrote as many histories and biographies as would in another author have made a reputation. Naturally the public refused to believe that a writer so prolific could be a great genius, while critics regretted that her work, pur- sued under all manner of conditions and personal trials, was sometimes unequal and sometimes excited the suspicion, not, we think, wholly untrue, that she was beating out the gold of her brain, of which she could not have been un- conscious, a little thin. It even happened occasionally, as in the marked case of "Salem Chapel," that the last half of a book was ordinary, well-written staff while the first half was flashing with genius and humour. So extraordinary, indeed, were the occasional inequalities in her work—just compare " Lucy Crofton " with " The Ladies Lindores "- that the present writer, one of her devoted admirers, who, like Kinglake, felt that life was happier when one of her novels had appeared, once asked Mr. Blackwood at Strathtyrum whether he had ever suspected Mrs. Oliphant of employing a ghost. " Yes," was the unexpected reply of that most acute of born critics, " but the suspicion was unfounded. The hills and plains are all in her mind." There were hills and plains, but the hills reached to a wonderful height. Mrs. Oliphant, whom, in spite of the great merit of her biographies, especially the "Life of Irving," and the still greater merit of many occasional essays, we refuse to consider except as a novelist, produced stories of three absolutely distinct kinds,—in one, the novel of religious mystery, she stood absolutely alone without rival or fellow ; in another, the novel of description, the only reasonable comparison is with Sir Walter Scott; and in the third, the novel of modern society, she rivals, both in humour and the subtle delineation of ordinary character, Jane Austen. There is nothing in English literature of its kind like "The Beleaguered City," the account of the invasion of the city of Sena by an army of ghosts, so audacious, so weird in its effect, yet so intensely softening and spiritual. We know of nothing like the painting of the different personages in that book,—of the honest Mayor, his bourgeoise mother, and his angel wife; of the earthly priest, who yet longs to be a true priest ; of the old aristocrat ; and of the mystic Lecamus, the feeble man for whom alone God has opened his inner eyes,— all so exquisitely natural while surrounded, engulfed, lost in an overwhelming mystery which, though it is like nothing ever recorded or even imagined before, the reader feels as he advances and slowly drinks in an impression which thence- forward never leaves him, might have happened. The atmo- sphere of the story is the atmosphere of another world per- mitted for a moment to supersede the atmosphere of this one, but in it move figures of this one, in all of whom, without exception, their special characteristics are brought out softly, yet sharply, by the very fog, which yet is not a fog but a haze let down from heaven, in which they are enveloped. Only a genius of the loftiest order could have produced that book, which never had a predecessor and will, we think, never have a successor, the most wonderful example in literature of the range of a woman's imagination. It is the more wonderful because Mrs. Oliphant, though she tried two or three times, could never do the same thing again, and in spite of the exquisite style and painting of the first part of " Old Lady Mary," her other excursions into the spiritual world were distinctly failures.
We have said that in some of her novels the true comparison for her powers is with Scott, and Scott alone, and this is true in a special degree of " Young Musgrave," " The Minister's Wife," " The Son of the Soil," " Katie Stewart," " The Ladies Lindores," " May," " The Wizard's Son," "The Last of the Mortimers," and parts, at least, of " Whiteladies." There is the same breeziness, the same healthy realism, the same power of story-telling, the same perception of originality and force in ordinary or inferior characters. There are chapters in " Young Musgrave," especially the one in which the old gipsy-woman appears in Court to hear for the first time that one son has guiltlessly murdered another, of which, in their restrained force and passion, Scott would have been proud, as be would have been of the revivalist scenes in " The Minister's Wife," se like in their power the best chapters of " Old Mortality," and of the character of Rolls the butler in " The Ladies Lindores." The irresistibleness of the comparison with Scott is the more striking because Mrs. -Oliphant's central figures were always women. There is 'perceptible through all her stories a faint contempt for men, as 'unaccountable, uncomfortable works of God, whom she under- stood best when they were most ordinary, like the slightly thick-witted and entirely loveable hero of " Harry Joscelyn," -or most foolish, like Paul in " He who Will not When he May." It was women she loved to depict, but they are the women Scott would have drawn under the very circumstances he would have created, had his genius taken him that way. This fancy for studying women comes out in all her stories, and -especially in some of those of which the scene is laid in Carling- ford—" Miss Marjoribanks," " Phcebe Junior," " The Perpetual Curate "—stories in which Jane Austen would have recognised a humourist as great as herself, though of a different kind. Mrs. Oliphant entirely lacked Miss Austen's power of painting the inherent vulgarity in some women who yet are ladies, and though, like Miss Austen, she never made of crime a motif— there is a partial exception in " Whiteladies "—and never con- -descended to what is now called the sex question, yet her social situations are stronger and more interesting, and she -could conceive of a woman, like Lady Car as she appears both in " The Ladies Lindores" and in the sequel called by her own name, who was wholly beyond the limits of Miss Austen's range. We say nothing of " Mrs. Margaret Maitland," for that is not a novel but a sketch drawn most lovingly from life, and the original neither came nor could have come in Jane Austen's way. Add that Mrs. Oliphant had in the most unusual degree the faculty of pleasant story-telling, so that her novels gave acute pleasure to many different minds, and were waited for by men like the late Mr. Kinglake through life with eager expectation, and we have a novelist who in our -day was inferior to George Eliot alone. Mrs. Oliphant's 'humour, though of a subtly pleasant kind, was not mordant like George Eliot's, nor could she have drawn either Maggie Tulliver or Dorothea; but her stories had a healthy breeziness in them as of the Scotch scenery she loved, which it was not -in George Eliot's powerful imagination to infuse into her tales.
We believe that as time advances there will be more, and not less, appreciation of Mrs. Oliphant, and we trust that Messrs. Blackwood, who through two generations regarded -her as a dear friend, will see their way to an edition of some twenty of her best novels, if possible in the two-volume form. Mrs. Oliphant put a quantity of work into all she did, and when compressed into a single volume most of them require a type too small for weary eyes. To publish a collection of all her novels is to do her injustice,—even "Hester," for example, in spite of the delicious character of the heroine, has in it some quality of tediousness, as if a tired writer were 'recollecting what passed,—and we see no sense in printing the works of imagination and the works of labour together. The latter contain many fine things, but with the exception of the "Life of Irving" they bear little trace of the original genius which most unquestionably dwelt behind those humorous, watchful eyes, which saw and comprehended everything except, indeed, the man who is at once able and good. In all the vast array of her stories there is not one such man, though she thought of one in Russell, in "The Poor Gentleman," and even him she was obliged to make a do-nothing who knew himself.
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