FICTION.
ROBERT SHENSTONE.*
Me. DawsoN's romance—the life-history- from childhood to marriage of a bookish boy who seeks his fortunes in London—pmients many familiar features, but they are treated with vigour and occasionally with freshness. The struggling schoolmaster, always on the verge of bankruptcy, but with an art almost amounting to genius for writing delusive circulars, and his scratch staff are drawn with spirit ; the siren daughter, conscienceless and selfish, is equally familiar, but a less convincing portrait. Incidentally we may note that rag-time music was not known in the "seventies," and that it was Balbus, not Balba, who is traditionally associated with the building of walls. Then there are the strong-minded aunt, who reminds us at times of Miss Betsy Trotwood by her mingled dourness and goodness of heart and her unfortunate experiences of matri- mony ; Mr. Heron, the philanthropist n-ho plays at being a misan- thrope; his half-mad servant ; and the comic lodging-house-keeper Mrs. Trudge—all of them characters with a Dickensian flavour. But Mr. Dawson has his own methods, and he writes well. Excellent, for example, is his description of Mrs. Trudge as "a small woman who inspired me with the notion that she was not so much small by nature as truncated with the downward pressure of cala- mity." And there is something very pleasing in Aunt Te.bitha's hero-worship of Lincoln, and the bracing effect of her common-sense and satiric tongue on the narrator, who had been bred up with an overweening sense of his literary talents by his kindly but adoring parents. Robert Shenstone himself is not a first-class hero, and owes his successes and escapes quite as much to good luck as to management. And the long arm of coincidence is freely used in his relations with the pseudo-misanthrope who turns out to be the long-lost uncle of his good genius, the daughter of a scoundrelly banker. The clearing up of the mystery of Mrs. Herons complicity in the great bank-note-paper robbery is not altogether free from melodrama, and Robert's success as a playwright— in view of his preparation—must be regarded as rather exceptional. But with all reserves, this is a pleasant and wholesome story, written in dark hours, as we learn from the touching dedication, to distract the author's mind from present troubles by recalling a brighter world long since left behind.
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