OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
The Assistant-Reader has been at work, and makes the following report:—
A pretty little volume is Mr. Anthony C. Deane's Holiday Rhymes (Henry & Co). That its merits are high may be safely inferred from the fact that the largest instalment of its verses came from the columns of Mr. Punch. Mr. Deane handles his varied metres with great skill, his style is neat and pointed, his rhymes are above reproach, and his satire, especially when he deals with literary and academic matters, hits hard and straight. And, though the author is a Deane, he never sermonises. But why not sermons in verse? I commend the idea to Mr. Deane. He could carry it out excellently, and earn the thanks of countless congregations.
Messrs. Methuen are publishing a series of English Classics, edited by Mr. W. E. Henley. They have started with Tristram Shandy, and have persuaded a Mr. Charles Whibley to introduce Laurence Sterne to the reading public of the present day. "Permit me," says Mr. Whibley, in effect, "to present to your notice Laurence Sterne, plagiarist, sentimentalist, and dealer in the obscene," a right pleasant and comfortable introduction, setting us all at our ease, and predisposing us at once in favour of the humble candidate for fame, whom Mr. Whibley alternately kicks and patronises. 'Tis pity (I have caught Mr. Whibley's own trick) that Mr. Whibley had not the writing of Tristram Shandy. He, at any rate—so he seems to think—would never have outraged our sense of decency, or moved us to "thrills of æsthetic disgust" by such platitudes as My Uncle Toby's address to the fly. Rabelais, it appears (Mr. Whibley has got Rabelais on the brain, he is Pantagruelocephalous), Rabelais may steal a horse, but Sterne must not look over a hedge. One may have no wish to defend the "indecencies" of Sterne, but to condemn them by contrasting them with the efforts of Rabelais is a highly modernised form of criticism, of which I should scarcely have supposed even a Whibley capable. On the whole, I cannot commend this introduction, with its jingling, tin-pot, sham-fantastic style. I feel inclined to cry out aloud with Master Peter, "Plainness, good boy; do not you soar so high; this affectation is scurvy." And why is Mr. Whibley so hard upon the suburbs? His own manner of writing is excellently calculated to fascinate Clapham, and move Peckham Rye to an enthusiasm of admiration.
Messrs. Chatto and Windus have brought to a happy conclusion their monumental work of republishing the Campbell and Stebbing translation of Thiers' History of the Consulate and Empire. It is in twelve neatly bound, conveniently sized, admirably printed volumes, illustrated with many steel engravings. A little soon, perhaps, to talk of Christmas presents. But if there be any amiable uncle or fairy godmother kept awake o' nights wondering what they shall give for Christmas box to Dick, Tom or Harry, here's the very thing for him, her and them. The volumes comprise a library in themselves, and their study is a liberal education. Since the world began there is no human life that possesses for humanity an interest keener or more abiding than that of Napoleon. Sometimes for a while it seems to sleep, only to awaken with freshened vigour. The Napoleon cult is one of the most prominent features of to-day. The Presses of Paris, London and New York teem with new volumes of reminiscences, letters or diaries, all about Napoleon. Thiers' massive work has stood the test of time and will ever remain a classic. To us who read it to-day it has the added interest of its author's personality, and the sad labour of his closing years. It is pretty to note how Thiers, writing before the creation of the Third Empire, for which this book did much to pave the way, shrinks from mentioning Waterloo. For him it is "the battle after the day of Ligny and Quatre Bras." We are well into his detailed account of the great fight before we recognise the plains of Waterloo. Thiers does not disguise his effort to extol the Prussians at the expense of the English. It was Blucher, not Wellington, who won the fight the Prussians call the Battle of La Belle Alliance, Napoleon the Battle of Mont St. Jean, and the presumptuous English Waterloo. The patriotic and therefore irascible Frenchman little thought the day would dawn on France when it would learn of a battle more calamitous even than Waterloo. Still less did he perpend that he himself would make the personal acquaintance of the Prussians in circumstances analagous to those amid which, on a July day in 1815, three plenipotentiaries set forth from Paris to meet the foreign invaders, and sue for terms that should, as far as possible, lessen the humiliation of the occupation of the French capital.
I confess I am disappointed with Anthony Hope's The God in the Car. Some of the dialogue is in his very best "Dolly" comedy-vein. The last interview between hero and heroine is admirably written. But it is not "in it" with his most originally conceived story of The Prisoner of Zenda. The title requires explanation, and you don't get the explanation until the climax, which explanation is as unsatisfactory as the title. "The hazy finish is," quoth the Baron, "to my thinking, artistic." "What becomes of the lady? what becomes of the lover?" are questions the regular romance-reader will put. And the reply is evidently the old one, on which no improvement is possible, "Whatever you please my little dear, you pays your money and you takes your choice." But it is well worth reading, and our friend "the Skipper," who "knows the ropes," will find there are some, though not very frequent, opportunities for his mental gymnastic exercise.
The Baron de Book-Worms.