Snaith, John Collis. Henry Northcote. †$1.50. Turner, H. B.
Northcote is a starving young advocate whose very conviction of the justice of power summons to him a genie in the shape of a solicitor who briefs him in a sensational murder case. The guilt of the woman whom he defends is beyond question but his hypnotic oratory secures her acquittal, when follows a reactionary period in which the sense of debasement at having sacrificed right to personal ambition makes him an easy prey to the woman’s wiles. He kills her in self defense, and sets fire to his garret to cover the deed. His composed confession is passed by for a “gruesome pleasantry,” and the reader is confident that this panoplied hero will sooner see the judge’s bench than the prison cell.
“It has no art—no architecture, we may say. But it has some striking scenes, is studded with admirable points of observation, and gives great hope of what might come from the author’s mind if he cared to exert it.”
+ – Acad. 70: 480. My. 19, ’06. 420w.
“Compared to ‘Broke of Covenden,’ ‘Henry Northcote’ is more of a piece in general execution, more uniform, more confined to one violent minor key.” Charlotte Caxton.
+ – Bookm. 24: 272. N. ’06. 1600w.
“The book is Henry Northcote, and in so far as it bodies forth that strange modern mind, so strong and so weak, so pitiful and so arrogant, it is a very considerable and fine thing.”
+ – Lond. Times. 5: 170. My. 11, ’06. 660w.
“However reluctantly one must yield to such a book the admiration due to a thing of crude force.”