The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson. By One of the Firm. Edited by Anthony Trollope. Smith, Elder, and Co.
Mr. Trollope has, in this little brochure, essayed the epic of modern advertising. The following sentences epitomise the moral thereof:—Robinson, loquitur—'Did you ever believe an advertisement? Jones, in self-defence, protested that he never had. And why should others be more simple than you? No man, no woman, believes them. They are not lies; for it is not intended they should obtain credit. I should despise the man who attempted to build his advertisement on a system of facts, as I should the builder who lays his foundation on the sand. The groundwork of advertisement is romance. It is poetry in its very essence. Is Hamlet true?'
'I really do not know,' said Mr. Brown.
'There is no man, to my thinking, so false,' continued Robinson, 'as he who in trade professes to be true. He deceives, or endeavours to do so. I do not. Advertisements are profitable; not because they are believed, but because they attract attention.'
Per contra. 'The ticketing of goods at prices below their value is not to our taste, but the purchasing of such goods is less so. The lady who will take advantage of a tradesman, that she may fill her house with linen, or cover her back with finery, at his cost, and in a manner which her own means would not fairly permit, is, in our estimation, a robber. Why is it that commercial honesty has so seldom charms for women? A woman who would give away the last shawl from her back will insist on smuggling her gloves through the Custom-house. Is not the passion for cheap purchases altogether a female mania? And yet every cheap purchase—every purchase made at a rate so cheap as to deny the vendor his fair profit, is, in truth, a dishonesty—a dishonesty to which the purchaser is indirectly a party. Would that woman could be taught to hate bargains! How much less useless trash would there be in our houses, and how much fewer tremendous sacrifices in our shops?'
Those who read in the Cornhill Magazine this sketch of the advertising firm, its wonderful puffs, and the sensations they caused in Bishopsgate; with the unromantic, hard, business-like match-making which is interwoven with it, will remember with what a keen and somewhat cynical satire, too much upon a dead realistic level perhaps, the story is told. Those who have not read it there, are recommended to make themselves acquainted with it. It is but 'An Editor's Tale,' but its moral is wholesome and timely.
Mariette; or, Further Glimpses of Life in France. A Sequel to Marie. Bell and Daldy.
This story of humble life in the French provinces is intended as a sequel to that of 'Marie,' and is a mere narrative of events occurring in the daily existence of the humblest of serving women, who reports the sayings and doings of her masters, through the incidents, political and municipal, occurring in the good town of Nantes, where they reside. The book is amusing enough, a sort of French country town chronicle, such a record as Mrs. Gaskell would now and then give us of English life under the same conditions; there is nothing in it to stir the passions—nothing to irritate or vex; but on the other hand, nothing to soothe or calm the nerves. It resembles a long unbroken chant, as if from the lips of an aged crone, which neither commands the attention of the listener nor prevents him from bestowing it on anything else, and yet is regretted when it is over, simply because the scenes, the characters, the conversations are all familiar to our memory, and hallowed by long association. The little volume possesses one charm of its own. It is written without the smallest pretension, easy and simple in style, and delicately subdued in sentiment, in keeping with the character and station of the supposed narrator.
Lorna Doone. A Romance of Exmoor. By R. D. Blackmore. Sampson Low.
We spoke of this novel when it first appeared in almost the highest terms of commendation that we could command. A re-perusal of it only confirms our impression, that in scholarly conscientiousness, artistic skill, and romantic interest, it more nearly approaches the best of the Waverley novels than any fiction that has appeared since then. We can give it no higher praise. We only wonder that it has so tardily won the honours of a cheap edition.