For whimsical audacity, and quaint unexpectedness. Mr. Pain, in his latest book, Playthings and Parodies, would be hard to beat. In this there is a good back-ground of shrewd observation. He does not propose to make your flesh creep, or your eyes run torrents. He simply succeeds in making you laugh. In "The Processional Instinct," Mr. Pain informs us that he has discovered that our private life is circular, and our public life is rectilineal. Shakspeare, who, being for all time, and not merely for an age, recommends this author to the general public when he says that everybody "should be so conversant with Pain."
The Memories of Dean Hole is rather a misleading title; "but," says the Baron, "I suppose the term 'Reminiscences' is played out. The word 'Memories' seems to suggest that someone, whether Dean Hole, or Dean Corner, or any other Dean, had more than one memory, as indeed those persons appear to possess who mention their 'good memory for names,' and their 'bad memory for dates,' and vice versâ. Soit!" quoth the Baron, in excellent French, "you may take it from me (if I'll part with it) that the Hole book is by no means a half-and-half sort of book, but is vastly entertaining." The stories of "The Cloth" form the most entertaining part of the work. The Baron wishes success to this work of the Dean in Holey Orders, and suggests that the volume should be re-entitled Gathered Leaves from Dean Hole's Rose Garden, a better title than "Reminiscences."
Marion Crawford's Don Orsino (published by Macmillan & Co.) would be worth reading were it only for the colour of its word-painting, and for its high-comedy dialogue. Yet is Mr. Crawford rather given to pause in his story, for the sake of moralising on the tendencies of the age; and the reader, patient though he may be, when he has become interested in the personages of the novel, does not care to be button-holed by a digression. Marion Crawford's recipe for commencing an amorous duologue (early in Vol. III.), which is to lead up to a declaration of love, is deliciously ingenious. It begins with the gentleman taking a seat, and his first remark is upon the chair. Mr. Crawford evidently remembers the old story of how the tenor who knew but one song, "In my Cottage near a Wood," used to introduce it into any scene of any Opera by the simple process of making his entrance alone and finding a chair on the stage. "Aha!" quoth he. "What's this? A chair? and made of wood! Ah! that word! how it reminds me of my 'umble home, 'my cottage near a wood.'" Cue for band; chord; song. In this instance, the love-scene, admirably led up to on the above plan, is strikingly powerful; it is the work of a master-hand. The dénoûment is both artistically original and, at the same time, ordinarily probable. May all readers enjoy this excellent novel as much as has the sympathetic
Baron de Book-Worms.
Classical Question.—If some schoolboys, home for Christmas holidays, wanted Sir Augustus Druriolanus to give them a Christmas Box (not a private one at the Pantomime), what Ancient Philosopher would they mention? Why—of course—"Aristippus."
