'Xenophon' is the father of military history, of romance, and of Boswelliana. He is less appreciated than 'Herodotus,' but is equally vivacious and interesting. We do not think, therefore, that his 'chief service to modern readers consists in the amount of information he has preserved.' There is more in his pictures of contemporary life than this. Sir A. Grant has done his work well, and 'Xenophon' ought thereby to be more attractive to English readers than he has been. We could have wished for a somewhat fuller picture of his life and times, but the exigencies of space are imperative.
The Works of Virgil, rendered into English Prose. By James Lonsdale, M.A., and Samuel Lee, M.A. Macmillan and Co.
A prose translation of 'Virgil' is of course unreadable. We presume this is meant as a 'crib.' Davidson certainly left room for improvement, and may now be considered to be superseded by the excellent translation of Messrs. Lonsdale and Lee. The introductions are full of matter, though they are written in a pedantically antique style which was probably suggested by a not quite accurate sense of congruity.
Ralph the Heir. By Anthony Trollope. Hurst and Blackett.
Mr. Trollope's novels contribute a distinct element to English fiction. He is the creator, almost perfect, of commonplace. If we limit his genius, it is not because it so embodies itself, for it demands genius as great to create the commonplace as the heroic or the grotesque. Extremes are always easy, they are the fault of all undisciplined force; only well-balanced and practised power can avoid them. The artistic defect of Mr. Trollope is that he never does anything else. He is a Paganini among novel writers; he fiddles exquisitely, but always upon one string. He has no situations of passion; his characters are not conceived so as to render development into passion possible. What heroics can be got out of the Bishop of Barchester or his wife, or 'Ralph the Heir'? Within his range, Mr. Trollope has wonderful variety, but before opening a new work of his we may always predicate, if not the species, yet the genus of his characters; no one would ascribe to him many-sidedness. 'Ralph the Heir' is essentially commonplace—not wicked, nor good—not weak, nor strong—in any distinctive way. A young man with a few hundreds a year, the heir-presumptive of his uncle, he has simply gone the way of many young men who ultimately settle down, as he does, into respectable country gentlemen, magistrates, and fathers. He has given himself to horse-racing, hunting, and betting, with their belongings, and has got embarrassed, his only chance of extrication being the reversion of the estate, the possession of which, however, his uncle seems likely to retain for many years. Out of these circumstances, such being his characters, the entanglements of the tale are wrought. Ralph, who is as weak in love as he is in moral habit, commits himself to a virtual declaration of affection for Clarissa, the daughter of his guardian, Sir Thomas Underwood; his pecuniary necessities press hard upon him, and drive him to the extremity of a proposal to Polly Neefit, the daughter of a wealthy breeches-maker; a brilliant cousin of Clarissa's—Mary Bonner—comes from the West Indies, with whom everybody falls in love; delivered from old Neefit by the accidental death of his uncle, Ralph proposes to her and is refused, then again to Clarissa and is refused, and at last is married by Lady Eardham to her daughter Augusta. The peculiar triumph of Mr. Trollope is that he carries his hero and the ladies through all this without a single feeling of disgust. None of the characters have much in them except Mary, who shadows a fine conception, but they are all redeemed from contempt. Pooly Neefit is vulgar, but she has strong common sense and true-hearted honesty, and knows what she is; Clarissa is a coquette, but she has tenderness and faithfulness, if not depth of feeling; the Eardhams are the Eardhams, types of scores of common-place families, who, if they think about affections at all, clearly regard them as troublesome superfluities; the viciousness and vulgar ambition of old Neefit are redeemed by a certain generosity and kindliness of social and domestic feeling. Everybody interests, nobody excites; everybody is tolerable, and commonplace. Indeed, so conscious of this is Mr. Trollope, that he devotes two or three pages at the conclusion of his novel to an apology for it, showing us how undesirable it is that every man should be a Henry Esmond, and every woman a Jeannie Deans. True: but the only hope for mean, selfish, common-place people is for literary artists to paint ideal excellence. Mere portrait-painting is not the final cause of poetry and fiction; while life-like, it must be life-idealized. Jeannie Deans has touched myriads of common-place hearts, and made them nobler. Why does not Mr. Trollope try to give us a Jeannie Deans occasionally? What good to anybody is it to paint only Ralph Newtons, except, perhaps, to excite a tolerance for common-place, an allowance for the defective men and women one meets with every day—an end important, no doubt; but why not delineate virtues and vices—nobilities and meannesses—so as to do something to excite the emulation of Ralph Newtons themselves, as well as our charity towards them?
Mr. Trollope's masterpiece in this novel is Sir Thomas Underwood, a barrister, living in chambers, with two daughters at Putney, who has been Solicitor-General, and who has been all his life purposing to write a life of Bacon—a conception, again, of a respectable form of a somewhat selfish and irresolute character, but admirably portrayed. So is Ontario Moggs, the son of Ralph's bootmaker, his rival in the affections of Polly Neefit, a red-hot Communist orator, and the working man's candidate in the Percycross election. In the description of this election, at which Sir Thomas was returned and then unseated on petition, Mr. Trollope has excelled himself. Contested elections have often been described; Thackeray, Dickens, and George Eliot especially, have found them as fruitful in humour as Hogarth did. George Eliot excepted, we doubt if any living writer could approach the skill and power with which the election of Percycross, the tactics of its candidates, and the characteristics of its free and independent electors are described; happily, it is now disfranchised for bribery.
Mr. Trollope's selection of types of characters and his successful delineation of them are equal even to his best work. Sir Thomas and old Neefit are not surpassed by Mrs. Proudie and Archdeacon Grantley. Every portrait is characteristic, and is most carefully finished. There are few things in fiction finer than the subtle admixture of excellencies and defects in Sir Thomas. We do not care much for 'Ralph the Heir;' we feel neither great indignation at his sins nor great satisfaction with his virtues. He will be as happy as a nature like his can be. Old Neefit is, in his way, as distinctive in drawing and indelible in impression as Pickwick himself, only, of course, far less agreeable.
Mr. Trollope is a Dutch artist, and paints with the fidelity of a Teniers and the power of a Paul Potter. It is not the highest school of art, but Mr. Trollope is a master in it, and 'Ralph the Heir' is one of his greatest pictures. If one word may designate it, it is a novel of selfishness exhibited in various striking types, not pleasant, but unquestionably powerful, and likely to live when many things that Mr. Trollope has done are dead and forgotten.
Joshua Marvel. By B. L. Farjeon. Tinsley Brothers.
The promise which we recognised in Mr. Farjeon's 'Grif' is more than fulfilled in 'Joshua Marvel.' The author, with a rapidity which is really surprising, has acquired a mastery of delineation and a delicacy of touch, that give him high rank among brothers of his craft. The opening chapters, which delineate the boyish friendship of Joe and Dan, and the bird-fancying of the poor little cripple, are as full of delicate beauty and pathos as anything that we have for a long time read. Indeed, the entire history of the friendship of the two lads is exquisitely conceived and wrought out. In its unselfishness, tenderness, truthfulness, and moral beauty, it is like the love of David and Jonathan. Like the author of 'Episodes from an Obscure Life,' Mr. Farjeon's strength lies in his descriptions of East-end life. Like him, too, he idealizes it by the delineation of noble thoughts and faithful love. The old sailor—Mr. Meddler—the Lascar—Minnie—Ellen—as well as Joe and Dan, are all portrayed in a very masterly manner; while all is idealized, nothing is exaggerated. Joe is a very noble character. The shipwreck, and the experiences in the Australian forests, which Mr. Farjeon's colonial life qualify him for describing with great truthfulness and power of colouring and incident, are narrated in a very powerful way. The quiet beauty and pathos of the story have greatly charmed and moved us. It is a pure, wholesome book, carefully and skilfully written, the precursor, we hope, of many more.