CURRENT LITERATURE.
EREWHON REVISITED TWENTY YELES LATER. Erewhon Revisited Twenty Years Later. By Samuel Butler. (Grant Rchards. 6s.) —The reason why continuations commonly fail to interest readers as much as the originals to which they are attached may, perhaps, be seen in the most famous example in our language, "Robinson Crusoe." The second part of this romance is mainly a story of adventure. The most original and attractive portion of the first part, the situation of the solitary man, his thoughts, his fears, his hopes, his makeshifts, generally his struggle for existence, physical, moral, and spiritnal, is, and must be, absent. The vein is simply worked out. " Erewhon" is, it is true, of a different—i.e., the "Gulliver a Travels "—class. But something of the same result is observable. The most obvious subjects of satire have been used up. The-habit of mind which regarded immorality as an object of pity and ill-health as a crime, and the "musical banks," with their worthless currency, which nevertheless every one professed to value, were very ingenious imaginations. There is nothing so simply effective in ' Erewhon Revisited. The additions have more of exaggeration and caricature about them ; symbolised, it may be said, by the very names of "Hanky "and" Panky," the two Professors who play a leading part in the story, as by "Crank," "Bawl," and" Cabb," and other dramatis personae. There is a perceptible coarsening of tone, too, in all that is said about " Sunchildism." (The hero of " Ere- whon," it will be remembered, escaped in a balloon, in which he was • going to visit, he declared, the "air-god" and prevail upon him to terminate-a distressing draught, and the incident had been devel, pad into a religion between his first and his second visit.) The element of adventure, therefore, has become more important and more prominent. And here Mr. Butler has fallen into what we cannot but consider a really deplorable error. In "Erewhon " the hero, °lily in the course of his visit, is put into prison, and here an affection grows up between him and his jailer's daughter. He is released when he is sent for to Court, and there is an affectionate and mournful parting. When he revisits the country • he is confeented bi a young man, whom he recognises as his son, child of the girl whom he had to leave behind him when he was imperatively called away by a Royal summons. No one, we venture to say, would detect in the account of the parting, even as it steads now—whether altered or not from the original text we cannot say—any hint of such a consequence. Why, then, has it been introduced ? We cannot think that the reason is that the novel-reader of to-day demands the presence of this special ingre- dient if he is to relish the dish offered him. There may be such a demand, but Ale Butler would not condescend to satisfy it. We look rather for the cause in a supposed necessity to satisfy the probabilities a the story. The visitor wants an energetic defender who will defeat and confound his enemies. How should any Erewhonian, with the distorted thoughts and temper of his people, be qualified to play such a part ? Hence the necessity to account for his existence. If this is so, how true it is that the book has been spoilt by the element of adventure I Fur himself the present writer frankly says that for all its cleverness —a cleverness which in some respects it would be difficult to over• estimate—he has no wish ever to open it again. A sentence in the preface to a new edition of the original work demands some explanation. Mr. Butler says that he was greatly encouraged by a favourable review of " Erewhon" in the Spectator of April 20th, 1872. As a matter of fact, the review — it appeared as a subleader under the heading of "the Nee Gulliver "—was anything but favourable except for the recogni- tion of a 'very remarkable literary power." The author's object, according to the critic, was "to make men blush not foi what they do, but for what they think and feel, and not foi what they think and feel in their lowest, but in their highest moods." The critic says again :—" If any one will accept the implied satiric teaching of this book, be will find himself intel- lectually and morally nowhere." If this is praise, it can only be so because it rightly describes Mr. Butler's object, and correctly indicates the result ta which his satire is intended to lead.
Previous page
