OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
One of the Baron's "Merry Men All" has been reading and enjoying Mr. BARRY PAIN's Stories and Interludes. The book has a wondrously weird and heavily-lined picture in front, which is just a little too like a "Prophetic Hieroglyphic" in Zadkiel's Almanack. An emaciated and broken-winged devil is apparently carrying an engine-hose through a churchyard, whilst a bat flits against a curious sky, which looks like a young grainer's first attempt at imitating "birds'-eye maple." Upon a second glance it seems possible that the "hose" is a snake, the tail of which the devil is gnawing. The gruesome design illustrates a yet more gruesome Interlude, entitled, "The Bat and the Devil." But it gives no fair idea of the contents of the volume, some of which are charming.
Read White Nights, stories within a story, told by a tragical "Fool," of the breed of HUGO's Rigoletto, and POE's Hopfrog—with a difference. They are told with force and grace, and with unstrained, but moving pathos. Read "The Dog That Got Found," a brief sketch indeed, but abundantly suggestive. Poor Fido—the "dog that got to be utterly sick of conventionality," and came to such bitter grief in his search for "life poignant and intense!" He might read a lesson to many a two-legged prig, were the bipedal nincompoop capable of learning it.
The Glass of Supreme Moments is, perhaps, needlessly enigmatical, and Rural Simplicity, Concealed Art, and Two Poets, strike one as superfluously "unpleasant." Mr. PAIN seems slightly touched with the current literary fad for making bricks with the smallest possible quantity of straw. One halfpennyworth of the bread of incident to an intolerable deal of the sack of strained style and pessimist commentary, make poorish imaginative pabulum, though there seems an increasing appetite for it amongst those who, unlike Lucas Morne in The Glass of Supreme Moments, plume themselves upon possession of "the finer perceptions." The Magic Morning is a "scrap" elaborately sauced and garnished; the fleeting flavour may possess a certain sub-acid piquancy, but such small dishes of broken meats are hardly nourishing or wholesome.
Mr. PAIN has a delicate fancy and a graceful style, a bitter-sweet humour, and a plentiful endowment of "the finer perceptions." He has done some good work here, and will do better—when he finds his subject, and loses his affectations. Read White Nights, again says the Baron's "retainer."
BARON DE BOOK-WORMS & Co.
COMING BARONETCY TO BE MUSICALLY NOTED.—Song for a "Lullaby" or a "Good Knight" from Don Giovanni, and dedicated by nobody's permission to Sir ARTHUR SEYMOUR SULLIVAN, would be "Barty! Barty!" Will Sir EDWARD SOLOMON be in it? Probably this is "another night."