The Morrisons, a Story of Domestic Life. By Mrs. Margaret Hosmer. New York: John Bradburn.
Full of improbabilities, and becoming lurid with domestic tragedies at the end, this story has yet a sincerity and earnestness of style that may entitle it to be called respectable, among the mass of American stories. Novels are being sold by the five thousand which have far less ability in characterization or in grouping. The persons remain in one's memory as real individuals, which is saying a good deal; the dialogue, though excessive in quantity, is neither tame nor flippant; and there is an attractive compactness in the plot, which is all comprised within one house in an unknown city. But this plot soon gets beyond the author's grasp, nevertheless; she creates individualities, and can do nothing with them but kill them. The defects, however, are those of inexperience, the merits are the author's own. The value of her next book will probably be in inverse ratio to the success of this: should this fail, she may come to something; should this succeed, there is small hope for her.
Studies for Stories. By Jean Ingelow. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
These narratives are probably called "Studies for Stories," as the catalogue of the Boston Public Library is called an "Index to a Catalogue": this being a profession of humility, implying that a proper story, like a regular catalogue, should be a much more elaborate affair. Nevertheless, a story, even if christened a study, must be criticized by the laws of stories and no other.
Tried by this standard, we must admit that Miss Ingelow's prose, though possessing many merits, has not quite the charm of her verses. With a good deal of skill in depicting character, and with a style that is not unpleasing, though rather formal and old-fashioned, she has no serious drawback except a very prominent and unpleasant moral tendency, which is, indeed, made so conspicuous that one rather resents it, and feels a slight reaction in favor of vice. One is disposed to apply to so oppressively didactic an author the cautious criticism of Talleyrand on his female friend,—"She is insufferable, but that is her only fault." For this demonstrativeness of ethics renders it necessary for her to paint her typical sinners in colors of total blackness, and one seldom finds, even among mature offenders, such unmitigated scoundrels as she exhibits in their teens. They do not move or talk like human beings, but like lay figures into which certain specified sins have been poured. This is an artistic as well as ethical error. As Porson finely said to Rogers, "In drawing a villain, we should always furnish him with something that may seem to justify him to himself"; and Schiller, in his æsthetic writings, lays down the same rule. Yet this censurable habit does not seem to proceed from anything cynical in the author's own nature, but rather from inexperience, and from a personal directness which moves only in straight lines. It seems as if she were so single-minded in her good intents as to assume all bad people equally single-minded in evil; but they are not.
Thus, in "The Cumberers," the fault to be assailed is selfishness, and, in honest zeal to show it in its most formidable light, she builds up her typical "Cumberer" into such a complicated monster, so stupendous in her self-absorption, as to be infinitely less beneficial to the reader than a merely ordinary inconsistent human being would have been. The most selfish younger sister reading this story would become a Pharisee, and thank God, that, whatever her peccadilloes, she was not so bad as this Amelia. "My Great-Aunt's Picture" does the same for the vice of envy; "Dr. Deane's Governess" for discontent, and so on; only that this last story is so oddly mixed up with English class-distinctions and conventionalisms that one hardly knows when the young lady is supposed to be doing right and when doing wrong. The same puzzle occurs in the closing story, "Emily's Ambition," where the censurable point of the aspiration consists in being dissatisfied with the humbler vocation of school-teaching, and in pining after the loftier career of milliner, which in this community would seem like turning social gradations upside-down.
By far the ablest of the five "studies," at least in its opening, is the school-story of "The Stolen Treasure," which, with a high-flown name, and a most melodramatic and commonplace ending, shows yet great power in the delineation and grouping of characters. The young school-girls are as real as those of Charlotte Bronté; and although the typical maidenly desperado is present,—lying and cheating with such hopeless obviousness that it seems as if they must all have had to look very hard the other way to avoid finding her out,—yet there is certainly much promise and power in the narrative. Let us hope that the modesty of the title of this volume really indicates a lofty purpose in its author, and that she will learn to avoid exaggeration of character as she avoids exaggeration of style.
Collection De Vries. German Series. Vols. I.-X. Boston: De Vries, Ibarra, & Co.
The present high price of imported books, which is stimulating our publishers to rival their English compeers in typographical triumphs, is also creating an important class of German reprints, to which attention should certainly be called. Until lately the chief business in this line has been done by Philadelphia houses, but we now have editions from Boston publishers which surpass all predecessors in accuracy and beauty. Indeed, the average issues of the German press abroad do not equal these in execution; and though the books issued are thus far small, yet the taste shown in the selection gives them a peculiar value.
First comes Hans Andersen's ever-charming "Picture-Book without Pictures,"—tales told by the Moon, as she looks in at the window of a poor student. There is also a separate edition of this little work, issued by the same house, with English notes for students, by Professor Simonson of Trinity College.