British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIII / January and April, 1871

by Various

The title of this volume is attractive. What speculations and hopes are excited by the mere announcement, 'Diary of a Novelist!' The secrets into which curious readers have attempted to pry are about to be unfolded, the originals of the characters described are to be revealed, a real personal living interest is to surround the author's fictions ever after. What would we give to have such a diary from the pen of George Eliot or Charles Dickens! But amid such a rush of eager anticipations, we turn to the book itself, and find that no explanations are given—the authoress does not lift the veil. It is the journal of a year's most striking thoughts and noteworthy experiences. The first feeling is one of disappointment that the volume is so different from our expectations; but disappointment soon changes into hearty admiration and sincere gratitude. It is emphatically a good book. Sympathy with all that is beautiful and noble pervades the whole, and it is written with the ease of a practised hand. The rippling chat runs on through a succession of bright sunny scenes, ever and anon deepening into shady pools of profounder thought, and then again merrily hastening on its way. We are permitted to read the aims of this novelist's life, so true, pure, earnest, that we involuntarily exclaim, 'O si sic omnia!' There is also a cheerful religiousness in this diary, which will equally surprise those who think that a fiction-writer's only use is for amusement, and those who indiscriminately condemn all novels as unmitigated evils. The following sentence gives us the key-note of the book:—'I like to feel that this fair earth, which God has made, which even now, where man has not marred it, keeps the touch of his hand upon it still—breathes back its life to Him in love. And so the whole world becomes to me at once a Temple and a Home—a place for worship and for happy life: and I live in it, not alone, but sharing with all created things in the great Father's care, and joining with them in their many-voiced psalm of love and praise.' The charming sketches of natural scenery show the touch of an artist and a poet; the outline descriptions of character reveal the writer as a keen observer of human life; while her reflections on some of the tangled problems of the world tell us that she, too, has wrestled with the mighty mystery, and found peace only in trust.

We notice an exuberance of enthusiasm which might be toned down with advantage to the general style. The attempt to transcribe the Yorkshire dialect is not successful; but, as we have ourselves failed in that accomplishment, we appreciate the difficulty, and only notice the fact—'a fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind.'

The Iliad of the East. By Frederick Richardson. Macmillan.

The title of this book is of course ad captandum; the East has no Iliad, in any intelligible sense. What is here offered us is a series of legends, taken from Valmiki's Sanskrit poem, the 'Ramagana,' and taken from the French version of M. Fauche. It is a readable little volume, and may be recommended to those who desire to obtain some slight knowledge of the early Sanskrit poetry. When we compare a work like the Ramagana with the Iliad and Odyssey, we cannot avoid the conclusion that in the Greek mind there existed a vivid view of poetry, which is quite absent from the Hindoo mind. Rama's adventures are absurdly grotesque. We meet garrulous vultures, chivalrous monkeys, and so forth. The supreme imagination, which obtains a sublime effect by depicting humanity in its intensest forms, as in Achilles, Diomed, Odysseus, as in Helen, Andromache, Penelope, has no place in the Oriental poems. They are childish, exaggerated, mere nursery tales. The theorists, foremost among whom is Mr. Max Müller, who conceived that both the Greek and Sanskrit poetry come from one source, ought assuredly to explain to us why there exists so wide a difference between the Homeric poems and all the Oriental cycle. Homer's epic, like the goddess Athene, seems to have sprung perfect in person and panoply from the brain of its creator. The Eastern pseudo-epics are mere strings of ridiculous stories, with no definite connection, no beginning, middle, or end. This manifest literary difference would appear to indicate some definite racial difference. Valmiki is not an entirely unreadable author, but between Homer and him there is about as much difference as between Shakespeare and Quallon. Now, what the Sanskrit scholars ought surely to do for us is to state some theory whereby to account for the fact that their favourite language contains no literature worth perusal. There is neither the poetry of the Greek nor the theosophy of the Hebrew in Sanskrit. Hence we venture to infer that there is some innate racial distinction as yet undiscovered by the modern ethnologist.

John. By Mrs. Oliphant. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons.

Mrs. Oliphant's delicate touch in social description is too well known for it to be necessary to dwell upon it here. She is one of the few lady-novelists who improve as they go on; the truth being that she has never sought to obtain startling effects by absurd means, but has always studied nature and human nature. In 'John,' re-published from Blackwood's Magazine, which is a novelette rather than a novel, she is very felicitous. There is no more story than Canning's knife-grinder had to tell: it is a mere love-tale, 'Silly sooth,' as Shakespeare hath it. John is a country parson's son, and Kate is a banker's daughter, and she is thrown from her horse near the parsonage, and has to be taken there, and as she convalesces makes sad havoc with poor John. A simple story, but charming in its simplicity. The situation is well conceived. Dr. Clifford is a worldly person; his son John is utterly unworldly; Crediton, the banker, is a plutocrat of the first force; Kate is a spoilt child, who means to have her own way in marriage. The end of it all is easily conceivable; but the comedietta is played out with consummate skill, especially by its heroine. We are less interested in her lover than in her; and although doubtless Mrs. Oliphant is an able nomenclator, we venture to think that the book would have more properly represented its title if that title had been 'Kate.'

From Thistles—Grapes? By Mrs. Eiloart, Author of 'The Curate's Discipline,' 'Meg,' &c., &c. In three vols. Richard Bentley, Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty, New Burlington-street.

Given a bundle of thistles, how many bunches of grapes can it produce? Answer, none. This theory Mrs. Eiloart seeks to develope to its fullest extent; and, as a natural consequence, we find the miserable 'grapes,' the son, dangling by the neck on the scaffold whither the testimony of the 'thistles,' the unnatural parent, has sent him. There is nothing so new or original in the plot of the novel as the title, which with its note of interrogation at once arouses the interest of the reader, an interest which unfortunately goes little further than the title-page. The scene is laid in a cathedral town of England. Dr. Langton, a sanctimonious divine, who has sown a terrible crop of wild oats, as well as 'thistles' in his early youth, excites the enmity of one of his parishioners, a ragged vagabond, who has been convicted of robbery, and sentenced to one month's imprisonment in the county jail. The fellow, having escaped from durance, is concealed by the hero till morning, and succoured by the heroine in a wood, where he lies helpless and prostrate from a sprained ankle. But unfortunately Dr. Langton, passing by that way, discovers the poor wretch of whom the officers are in pursuit, struggling amidst the brambles, and instantly gives the alarm. The vagabond is consequently conveyed back to prison, muttering threats and imprecations against his betrayer. From these preliminary incidents arise a series of events, which, as they pass before us, we salute with all the reverence to which they are entitled from their venerable age and ancient service. But notwithstanding the long acquaintance we have enjoyed, in the land of romance, with the greater part of the adventures contained in these three volumes, some of them appear before us with their old garments so delicately patched and mended with Mrs. Eiloart's new materials that we willingly forget the proverbial weariness of the thrice-told tale. The death of the heroine is well managed. The kindness to the wretched offender, her efforts to drag him out of the mire into the atmosphere of intelligence and feeling, meets with the usual result. He becomes deeply enamoured of the sweet gentle girl according to the brutal instincts of his nature, and pushes her through the wood even to the brink of the precipice down which she is bent on throwing herself, maddened as she is with the discovery of the hero's attachment to another. The vagabond, whose brain is as usual muddled with beer, suddenly becomes sobered at the sight of her peril, and rushes forward to save her. Seizing her by the folds of her dress, the frail material gives way, and a portion of it remaining in his hand and afterwards found in his possession, becomes the circumstantial evidence, which causes his arrest. Now the thistles come forward to bear witness to having beheld the frantic flight of the girl through the wood, and the subsequent appearance of the boor on the very spot where she had met with her death. The testimony is crushing, the offender is condemned to die, and mounts the scaffold proclaiming his innocence. The revelation of the relationship in which he stands to his denouncer is made too late, and Dr. Langton arrives with the proof of the young lady's meditated suicide just in time to see his own illegitimate son swing in mid-air as the drop falls, and the shoutings of the crowd announce that all is over. The perseverance and tenacity of purpose which bear an author through the labour of executing three goodly volumes unaided in the task by incident, description, or dialogue, are beyond all praise. 'Il est si facile de ne point écrire,' exclaims Boileau. But the lady-writers of modern times evidently reverse the saying—with them it far more difficult to refrain.

'Six Months Hence.' Being Passages from the Life of Maria née Secretan. Three volumes. Smith, Elder and Co.

In the anonymous author of this story we have, we suspect, a new writer of fiction, and of considerable power. The novel is mainly a psychological one—although full of tragic incidents, and complicated in its plot. Indeed, the story is constructed with a mechanical ingenuity, which in the minuteness and mosaic of its incidents, is not unworthy of the author of the 'Lady in White.' The story is told autobiographically by the heroine, in a plain matter-of-fact way; full, however, of psychological self-analysis that would do credit to the author of 'Dr. Austin's Guests,' especially in the delineation of Fortescue's madness. The heroine enters upon a situation as governess in the family of Mr. Armitage, of Harcourt Villa, Hastings; who, being left a widower, with a son and daughter, Charles and Helen, has married, a second time, a woman of coarse nature and unscrupulous character, who has one son, Fred, a little boy of six. A Mr. Fortescue, an accomplished and wealthy young man, is a constant visitor at the villa, and is the presumptive lover of Helen, although he has never declared his love. Helen, and Maria, the governess, who are of the same age, become fast friends; gradually, however, Mr. Fortescue transfers his attentions to Maria, whose first guilt consists in yielding to ambitious desires, and permitting in herself and Mr. Fortescue treachery to her friend. The incipient attachment is strengthened by a long nursing of little Fred, who meets with an accident; the rescue of Maria from the tide by Mr. Fortescue precipitates matters, and they are secretly engaged to be married; two or three days before the intended disclosure of the engagement, and a few days before the intended marriage, Mr. Armitage dies, having, through the machinations of his wife, made an iniquitous will, whereby little Fred is made his heir in the event of his attaining the age of twenty-one; should he die before that age, the estates revert to the natural heir, no other provision being made. Maria and Mr. Fortescue are married. On the very week of their arrival at Dalemain Castle, Mr. Fortescue's seat in Cumberland, little Fred is murdered,—Mr. Fortescue being absent from home on some business in another part of Cumberland. Helen is suspected and tried; then suspicion falls upon Charles, against whom circumstantial evidence is strong, and public indignation stronger still. The mob at Lewes attempt to lynch him on the day of his trial, and he receives injuries of which he dies. In the meanwhile, Maria discovers that she has married a maniac, who inherits the fatal taint from his grandmother. In the event of such a contingency, by the grandfather's will, the property is to go to the next heir. Now comes the struggle between Maria's cupidity and her conscience; she tries to hide the fact of her husband's insanity, and discovers that, under a strong hallucination, he has been the murderer of little Fred. Again a struggle between selfishness and conscience—Helen is accused of the murder, and Maria conceals the evidence that will exculpate her, and, to put it out of her power to save her, goes with her husband into Switzerland; there she hears that the accusation is transferred to Charles, whom she has secretly but passionately loved. What conscience would not do for Helen, love does for Charles; she hastens to England with proofs of his innocence, but arrives only in time to see him die of the injuries received from the mob. All this is told with great power—the anatomy of selfishness in herself, of madness in her husband, and of love in Helen and Charles is very masterly, and almost painfully minute. The story is one of intense interest, and gives promise of another powerful writer of fiction, who, notwithstanding the feminine autobiography, and the minute analysis of female passions, is, we suspect, of the sterner sex.