NEW NOVELS.•
The Twickenham Tales is something new in form, in style, and even in taste. It is a collection of tales all more or less clever (and some very much more than less), which are set in a light framework of narrative. We do not pretend to say that this is new, because Mr. Wilkie Collins has done this kind of thing be- fore, and done it well—others, too, have done it long ago, and sundry others, later, with general approval. What is new in the " form " of the Twickenham Tales, is, that the framework in which it is set is really as interesting to the reader as the stories themselves with everyone of which it forms a contrast. It is composed of lively clever sketches of the supposed authors of the tales—lawyers, or persons learned in the law, preponderating. We have a Chancery barrister and a common-law barrister, a literary man pur sang, a clergyman, a college don, and a gentle- man who "lives at home at ease," in a villa at Twickenham. Mr. Verney is the host of this party of old college friends, who assemble by appointment at his house, to spend a week and amuse themselves. This they do in the open air all day, and in the evening they tell each a tale. Of these tales, the first, entitled "The Lady I saw in Hyde Park," is the longest, and upon the whole, the best, because, though others are more compact and complete, this is the most composite, ambitious, and effective. It is startling, attractive, shocking ; full of knowledge of human nature, male and female ; satirical, yet affectionate ; and in a large portion of the book are some of the best descriptions of grand natural scenery we ever read. It is like living in the Tyrol. The main fault of the tale is a sort of "solution of continuity ; " it is not all of a piece, struck out at one heat, and shows the joins, or rather the disjointed fissures, in the work. Still it is a tale far above the average in talent and literary ability. The best short tale is that called "An Episode in the Life of Godfrey Knox." There is a good ghost story spoiled by bringing in materials too gross for spiritual lore—a puddle of water and some reeds, on a chamber floor, are not within the limits of ghostly vraisemblanee. We will give our readers a specimen of the works, without quoting or spoiling the tales. The following, from the introductory chap- ters, will suffice to amuse and to convince our readers that our praise is not given without cause— "Alas! when Verney, D'-kubrey, and the rest of that year went down,' Scott stopped up, reading for his fellowship, and taking pupils. Those of his old friends, who came up to Cambridge occasionally, saw with pain the process of donization going on, and every time they went to his rooms found him drier and drier, and more incapable of talking about anything but the last or the coming examination, and losing all idea of a joke unless it was in the shape of funny answers to the examination questions. 'Ah, poor Scott !' they would say after they left him ; it's a thousand pities.'
"Now, Verney and his guests at Twickenham had not, as I have said, seen Scott from the time they left him in his hour of triumph as senior classic till he now stood before them—a don. No wonder they were shocked. They expected the fascinating and commanding youth to have blossomed into an equally fascinating and commanding man ; but alas ! a don is nothing more nor less than a dried bud. He never opens, or develops, or advances, or improves one hair's-breadth after he once becomes a college don ; on the contrary, he dries and shrivels, and wastes away till his poor emaciated spirit rattles loosely like a withered kernel inside the husk of learning and accom- plishments which he had acquired as an undergraduate. The worst of it is, that the buds which are thus selected to be dried and withered are frequently those which gave most promise; not promise of great originality or ability of the highest order, but promise of being ready and accomplished men, well versed in the knowledge possessed by those w'ho had preceeded them, and 'well able to apply it to practice, though not likely themselves to increase and improve the store ; for really great men—be it said for the consolation of dunces—are scarcely ever found at the top of the class-lists. "Very different indeed was William Rebow, who was always a man of converaational talent at Cambridge, and had great general information—a 'modern literature' sort of man, but he made no great figure in the University;
So• The Twickenham Tales. By A Society of Novelists. Published by Hogg and ns.
The World's Verdict. By the Author of "The Morals of May Fair," Soc. Pub- lished by Hurst and Blackett. he hated mathematics, and had had no proper schooling in classics, and so he was thought idle, though in truth he was by no means so, but was laying the foundations deep and wide for a lasting literary repatation. You know his writings well; they are on every drawing-room table; cheap editionsW them lie about on cottage shelves and in bachelors' rooms. I don't go any. where but I see something by leebow. But he always had a sort of feel? ing that authorship was a disgrace. He came of a high family, but with* bar sinister on his scutcheon, and on account of his race, I believe, princ.i7 pally, he always thought it mean and degrading to write—as, poor felloW, he and I are obliged to do—for bread ; and he sent his literary children into the world, as his father sent him, with a false name on them. If I send mine so too, be good enough not to draw inferences about my genealogy.
"Rebow was in the habit of seeing the others constantly, but Scott had not seen since they were undergraduates together. They were both shocked with each other. Rebow with Scott because he had been dried; Scott with 'Lebow because ten years of a hard-working, anxious, sedentary life had left their miserable footprints in the round shoulders and narriiw chest, and thin hair, and puffy fibre less cheeks."
The World's Verdict is, in many respects, better than most novels. In the first place, it is of the orthodox three-volume length, and the laziest or stupidest reader cannot say that it is fatiguing ; it fixes the attention at first, and maintains it to the end. This is in itself a great merit in a book that demands no intellectual effort from the reader. Yea, readers must bear in mind the fact that reading story books is not a more intellectual exercise than smoking a pipe. It is necessary to enunciate this truth sometimes, since we find a good many people who have art old superstition concerning printed letters—viz., that the writing and the reading of the same are always a species of intellectual la- bour. It is because the bulk of books of amusement call for no mental effort on the part of the reader, that he tires of them so soon. If his mind were roused to think and to feel its best by a novel, it would never weary him. The World's Verdict does this. We could not give a sketch of the story, without greatly diminishing the reader's pleasure when he gets the book, for it contains a story, and a very good one, worked out with all the art which is necessary for concealing art. The only questionable point in the mere execution, is whether the first chapters, in which the hero, saddened by his wretched fate, is introduced to the reader at Brighton, should have been the first chapters, or not. An old and revered authority says, " Beller, mon ami, commences par le commencement." But the best beginning of a tragic tale is sometimes difficult to find ; and poor George Rutherford might not have excited the reader's attention, if he had been introduced, on his first starting in life, as an artist. The character of Laura Bellayne is powerful in its truth ; there is no word too much or too little about that woman. Vain, weak, coquettish, false, heartless, cold, and sensual, yet beautiful outwardly, with brain and histrionic talent enough to act any part they choose for their selfish ends such women have the power to lure the love of the best men, if those men are too young and unworldly to be aware of their dodges. Laura is a fine specimen of a bad woman—very different from Becky Sharpe ; but as clever a sketch as the latter is a finished picture. Laura, with her large, soft, hazel eyes, her white small hands, and her graceful figure, is as clear to the mind's eye as the wonderful, piquante, plain, white-shouldered Becky. George Rutherford is as unlike Rawdon Crawley as one man can be unlike another, and we pity him ten times more. The style in which the author of that beautiful novel, The Morals of May Fair, writes, is of a kind which secures us from the neces- sity of saying that it could not fall short in the next novel. The World's Verdict is as well written in every respect. Correctness, sharpness, grace, and clearness, mark every paragraph ; and, though the tale is somewhat tragic, it is a great pleasure to read. it. The shortness of our space forbids quotation: but it is a book that every grown man and woman, who likes a good novel, should read. It is not a book for very young persons. The truths of social life are too clearly told—with high feeling, it is true ; but they are too sad for pleasure or profit to the unformed mind.
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