Our George du Maurier is in analogous case to that of a dramatic character of whom he may possibly have heard. M. Jourdain one day happed upon the discovery that he had been talking prose all his life without knowing it. Mr. du Maurier has lived through half a century master of an exquisite style, and only now makes the discovery known to the world. Plain indications of the fact were given in Peter Ibbetson. But in respect of style and in other matters, Trilby, just published by Osgood, McIlvaine & Co., is a prodigious improvement. That a man who has made his mark in pencil should, on taking up his pen, disclose possession of the rare gift of style, strikes the literary person with more marvel even than is evoked by discovery of a new novelist who can construct a plot and delineate character. Mr. du Maurier has rich endowment of all these gifts, which shine on every page of Trilby. He has, moreover, given us a new thing quite apart from the run of English novels. Henri Murger was before him with a deathless book in which life in the Quartier Latin is powerfully and tenderly portrayed. Mr. du Maurier's chapters on student life in Paris need not fear comparison with La Vie de Bohème, which is praise of the kind Sir Hubert Stanley hoarded. Beyond that, growing out of it, is the boldly conceived, firmly-drawn, and charmingly coloured character of Trilby, with her curious entourage, her varied life, and her tragic end. Little Billee, in whom some will find revived lost memories of a dear friend, is a charming personality, whilst Taffy and the Laird are live men. With such wealth of material and such felicity of touch, Mr. du Maurier might well have foregone the temptation of allowing Little Billee to hold forth on theological subjects to his dog, at a length inevitable in the pulpit, but a little out of place as an interlude in a novel. This passage supplies a jarring note in an otherwise almost perfect symphony.
One turns with eagerness to the Life of Frances Power Cobbe, more especially when it bears the honoured imprimatur of Bentley. Miss Cobbe has lived long, enjoying full opportunity of seeing things and people. She ought to have written a good book. "Instead of which," as the judge once said, she presents a slovenly-written, ill-digested mass of miscellaneous matter, including whole chapters devoted to digests of her published works. Pleased with herself from most aspects, she particularly admires her literary style. There is a passage in the book where she plaintively apprehends that, lost in admiration of her style, readers may miss the true purpose and importance of her writing;—this in volumes that bristle with such monstrosities as "compared to," "disapproved of," and "from thence," the latter a favourite foible of Miss Cobbe's style. In the second volume there are some attempts at what was naturally looked for, to wit, reminiscences of people the present generation would like to meet. But the burly, complacent figure of the diarist intervenes just as they come into view. She tells us what she said to them, not, what we are burning to hear, what they said to her. On the whole, looked at through Miss Cobbe's spectacles, they were a poor lot. Of Renan she writes, "The impression he has left on me is one of disappointment and short-falling." Short-falling is "style" of the athletic order, and, my Baronite vaguely surmises, is the opposite of high jumping. As to poor Carlyle, Miss Cobbe "never shared the admiration felt for him by so many able men." George Borrow, who wrote The Bible in Spain, she "never liked, thinking him more or less a hypocrite." Professor Tyndal is more in favour, since, in reply to the gift of one of Miss Cobbe's instructive books, the Professor wrote an acknowledgment, the exquisite irony of which his correspondent evidently does not see. One other partial concession is made in a passage sublime in its fatuousness. Speaking of one of her books, of which the fortunate reader will find a full summary in the first volume, Miss Cobbe says, "It was very favourably reviewed, but some of my fellow Theists rather disapproved of the tribute I had paid to Christ." The volumes bear on the front the Cobbe coat of arms and motto. The family may, we are assured, be traced back through four centuries, and, even in the present degenerate days, is highly connected.
Whilst the great heart of the people is considering whether it shall throb against the House of Lords or whether it shall forbear, Mr. Swift MacNeill, Q.C., M.P., has delivered at that ancient institution what the Marchioness was accustomed to describe as "a wonner." Titled Corruption is the alluring style of the neatly-bound volume issued by Fisher Unwin. There is, my Baronite says, a touch of artistic genius in the contrast between the plain, unassuming calico binding of the book and the blood and thunder that rolls through its pages. It is "the sordid origin of some Irish peerages" that Mr. Swift MacNeill undertakes to set forth. Perhaps if he were solely responsible for the work, its startling statements might be dismissed as coloured by fervid fancy. He, however, supports himself with the dictum of Mr. Lecky, "the majority of Irish titles are historically connected with memories not of honour but of shame," and illustrates it by extracts from confidential letters of Lords Lieutenants of Ireland, recommending gentlemen for the peerage. Altogether an interesting withdrawal of the curtain dropped before passages in the history of Ireland on the eve of the Union.
Signed and approved in the Baronite Office by
The Judicious Baron de Book-Worms.
BREAKING THE ICE.
He. "I've got to take you into Dinner, Miss Travers—and I'm rather afraid of you, you know! Mrs. Jolibois tells me you're very Clever!"
She (highly amused). "How absurd! I'm not a bit Clever!"