Da. BARRY'S equipment, whether we consider his culture, his intellect,
or his invention, is so immensely superior to that of the average writer of fiction as to ensure the attention alike of the most blase reader and the most captious critic. Some novels are readable, one can hardly tell why; but no difficulty exists in explaining the attraction of Dr. Barry's work. He is a scholar and an historian; he has ideas ; and he has a strongly marked style. If, however, we were asked to define his peculiar merit as a novelist, we should be inclined to say that it is his gift of fending distinction to the melodramatic formula. For that he deals in melodrama can hardly be denied. In the present instance one has only to point to the flight of the hero on a charge of murder, in dis- guise and under an assumed. name; to his extraordinary resemblance to a dead French nobleman ; to the seance of the hashish-eating club in Paris ; or to the exploits of the necro- mancer, Hiram Temple. Again, a special note of melodrama is the avoidance of the normal, and without exception all the personages engaged, from highest to lowest, are unusual, whether in appearance, demeanour, or action. The good looks of the hero can best be gauged from the statement that he was handsomer' than his double, the French nobleman, although the latter was "as handsome as a young St. Michael." Again, be is the most explosive hero imaginable, whether in a white passion of pity, or shouting with fury, or convulsed with emotion. It is said of him that he even "rose and dressed with a spring." He at least, however, has the excuse of being a bunted man, whose heart had been seared by a great domestic sorrow ; but this spasmodic quality is found in all the personages, almost without exception, and lends the 'story a feverishness which is at times fatiguing. Brilliancy • The Dayspring. By William Barry. London T. Fisher 'Malvin. Vis.] can become monotonous, and the story suffers from a lack of relief in its characterisation. On the other hand, it may be fairly urged that the scene and the period—Paris at the end of the Second Empire—in great measure justify this treatment, and certainly the artificiality and meretricious splendour of the epoch have found in Dr. Barry a wonderfully effective delineator. In all that concerns the staging and setting of his drama he is admirable. His vigorous rhetoric and his highly coloured descriptive style bring before one the glare and glitter of the vile lumiere with singular vividness. Dr. Barry is not a photographer, but a brilliant scene-painter, aid if he illumines the crucial episodes of his story with lime- light rather than lightning, there is nothing crude or vulgar in his method of presentation. Even in the realm of night- mare he remains an artist.
If Dr. Barry's portraiture were on a par with his descriptive gift, his novel would better stand the test of inevitable com- parison with the picture of Paris in the " sixties " given by Daudet in Le Nabab. But apart from the lack of relief already alluded to, the story suffers from the essentially theatrical conception of the principal characters. It is im- possible to be deeply moved by the fortunes of personages so consistently self-conscious as the dramatis personae of The Dayspring. In addition to that, we cannot say that we find the hero as sympathetic as the author evidently intends that he should be. Henry Guiron—we only know him under an alias—is a Galway farmer's son who flies the country after taking the life of the landlord who had evicted his dying mother. [We are given to understand that Henry was half demented at the time of the meeting, and that he was acting partly in self-defence.] On his way to Paris he falls in with a young Breton noble, a Legitimist, whose life, as well as that of a Mrs. Kingswood, he had saved from the knife of a Polish Anarchist at a London theatre. The Vicomte reintroduces him to Mrs. Kings wood, and he becomes the secretary of her husband, a pompous, pragmatical philanthropist. Through them, in turn, he becomes acquainted with the Comtesse de Montalais, a beautiful young widow, whose husband was killed on their honeymoon by Arabs in Algeria, who is under the influence of Hiram Temple, the necromancer, and with whom Henry falls in love. Temple, for his own selfish ends, has convinced Madame de Montalais of his ability to place her in communication with her dead husband, and resolves to make further capital out of the extraordinary resemblance between him and Henry. Madame de Montalais, on her aide, is at first attracted to Henry simply on account of this resemblance, makes him her confidant, and invites him to her country house. Thus we have the conflict in the young exile of the influences which tend to make him an enemy of society and the associate of outcasts and members of the "International," and the seductions of cushioned ease as the guest and confidant of his aristocratic patrons. The position is not exactly dignified, and it is hard to comprehend how the raw Galway boy who speaks like a peasant, and is wholly untutored in the ways of the world, should have at once made himself at home with these fastidious aristocrats. His chief aim is to emancipate Madame de Montalais from the thraldom of the necromancer, who retaliates by betraying the secret of his flight to his employer. How Henry contrives to reconcile the somewhat conflicting claims of chivalry and political convictions, how he extricates himself from the clutches of Mrs. Kingswood when that siren proposes an elopement, how he is nearly submerged in the Commune, how he wrings a confession from the dying necromancer and breaks down the last barrier between himself and his Com- iesse,—all this, and much more, is told in the brilliant, uncon- vincing phantasmagoria of Dr. Barry's novel. Though the story is given an historical setting, it cannot be regarded as an historical romance. It does not deal, except in episodes, with the disintegrating forces which honeycombed the Second Empire. It is rather a fantastic study of the Celtic tempera- ment as subjected to a variety of unfamiliar and perturbing influences. If love does. not exactly prove a liberal education to this "wild Irish boy "—there are moments when he comes perilously near degenerating into a philanderer—it certainly emollit mores, and in the issue lands him in very desirable quarters. We have failed to glean any special moral from the story, but in a romance which is so far from corresponding with the facts of life one does not look for precise teaching. To appreciate it best one must resign oneself to its improba- bilities, and adopt as far as possible the mental attitude neces. sary to the enjoyment of a fairy tale in which a poor pelisses son conquers a magician and marries a King's daughter.
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