Reviewers Guyed

Competitors were asked to in vein an extract front a review of one of the following books, embodying as large a number as possible of false prophecies and unlucky comparisons: Joseph Andrews, Sense and Sensibility, Waverley, Vanity Fair, Pickwick Papers, The Ordeal of

Richard Feverel, Under the Greenwood Tree. ot.

Here was a foretaste of the delightful collection of reviewers' gaffes that awaits its compiler. For example:

"We feel that . . . Mr. Hardy does for a small country parish what Anthony Trollope has done for the great Cathedral Society of which he writes."—(IACKPEN).

"It seems most unlikely that Mr. Hardy will depart from this serene Arcadia of his creation where the village prince can always be counted on to win his Cinderella, and all ends happily ever after.' '—(THEO WHEELER).

'We would assure Mr. Fielding that moral turpitude on the part of a lady of position is never likely to appeal to the novel-reader.' '--(NORAFI RICHARDSON).

"Mr. Dickens is a superior kind of literary hack, who should make a steady it' unspectacular livelihood, provided the supply of sporting satirical artists of genius, to whose plates he supplies the prose commentary, does not dry up."— (GRANV1LLE GARLEY).

Trembling with malicious joy, too many competitors missed their aim and began stabbing wildly at the victim, it was not enough to make the reviewer baldly obtuse; he had to err plausibly, smugly and quite horribly.

From eight delicious finalists I forced myself to choose five: with apologies to Granville Garley, Hackpen and Theo Wheeler. One pound each, then, to R. Kennard Davis, R. S. Stanier, G. J. Blundell, Margaret Bishop and Allan M. Laing.

PRIZES

(R. KENNARD DAVIS)

The Ordeal of Richard Feverel

It needs no very astute critic to discern that "George Meredith" is of the same sex as George Eliot. No woman has ever succeeded in drawing a tolerable likeness of the human boy; and the young Richard Feverel, though reminiscent of Dean Farrar's "Eric," is such, a piece of precocity as no man could have perpetrated.... Miss Meredith's men, indeed, are all either prigs or rakes, of the types beloved of female authors from Jane Austen onwards.

. There are some very mawkish love scenes, which the judicious reader will skip. . . . The "humorous" characters, such as Hippias the perpetual dyspeptic, are inex- pressibly tedious; Miss Meredith would be well advised to eschew the Comic Muse, with whom she has no natural affinity. . . . The plot, however, is ingenious and well-constructed, and the villains, male and female, are in the . best melodramatic tradition. In fact, if Miss Meredith will resolve to avoid cleverness, philosophical digressions and high-falutin' sentiment, and to entertain us with brightly- coloured scenes from aristocratic life, she may win for her books a place on our shelves beside those of authors such as Ouida.

(R. S. STANIER)

Waverley, or 'Tis Sixty Years Since ' It is not to be wondered at if the popularity of such poems as "The Lady of the Lake" and "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" has produced imitators in prose; but the anonymous author of Waverley, or 'Tis Sixty Years Since is no Walter Scott, and will forgive us, we hope, if we draw his attention (or let us at once say hers, for there can be little doubt of the writer's sex) to the fact that other ingredients are necessary to success than a romantic plot and a Scotch setting.

It has been truly observed that every one has in himself the materials for one novel, and Waverley bears obvious marks of being such a novel; but, should the authoress again'take pen in hand, we would advise her to eschew the exotic scenery of the Highlands and the Border country, and cling to the familiar English countryside which she has so skilfully portrayed in the opening chapters of her first book. Let her not hope for financial success from her novel-writing; but if she will purify her next book of would-be Scotticisms (which cannot fail to disgust a refined ear) and of ill-conceived attempts to render nobility ridiculous and savagery romantic, she may at any rate achieve a succes d'estime.

(a. J. BLUNDELL)

Under the Greenwood Tree

While choosing to give his short pastoral romance the title Under the Greenwood Tree, Mr. Thomas Hardy has not elected to endow his rustic characters with the vivid, if coarse, vitality of Shakespeare's peasants. In this, no doubt, he is wise. Mr. Hardy is not Shakespearean in range or depth.

It must, however, be conceded that his work is not without a diffused, iuperficial charm. His sentimentality makes one wonder whether he has not been studying the German Roman- tics. There is a hint of young Werther in the figure of the Vicar of Mellstock.

Mr. Hardy's preoccupation with the homely minutiae of village church affairs suggests that he may prove to be a novelist with a

religious bent, the Charlotte M. Yonge, shall we say, of the Low Church. On the other hand, his not unskilful handling of a plot based on the happenings of everyday life gives him a certain affinity with our more secular lady novelists; Miss Austen, for 'example, though without her malice and exquisite sense of irony, Mr. Hardy, indeed, seems strangely unaware of life's little ironies, tragic or comic. "All's well that ends well" will, one fore- sees, be the pleasant burden of his future work in fiction.

(MARGARET BISHOP)

Under the Greenwood Tree

English village life, with all its appealing humours, has in the present century been a preserve of women novelists rather than of men; but with the &lineation of Under the Green- wood Tree the mantle of Miss Mitford and Mrs. Gaskell has fallen decisively upon the shoulders of a young man in his early thirties— Mr. Thomas Hardy. This delightful book about a rustic wooing breathes an air of carefree happiness and gentle piety, not unmixed with innocent humour, which is clearly expressive of the author's own attitude to life. Mr. Hardy's skill does not lie in the subtle analysis of character, or in the re-creation of the sensa- tional or sordid happenings whi9h do, alas! occasionally mar the tranquillity of our villages; he has eyes only for its sweetness and simple comedy. For this reason his work will, we feel, exert a most beneficial influence on the morals of the younger generation. We look forward to a second rustic idyll- from Mr. Hardy's pen; or (as we understand that he has also written in verse) to a volume of sonnets inspired by an actual Fancy Day, for which we venture to suggest the title "A Pair of Brown Eyes."

(ALLAN M. LAING)

The Pickwick Papers

Mr. C. Dickens, a new author, has challenged fate with a sort of facetious miscellany, com- pendiously titled The Pickwick Papers. In this plotless hotch-potch, there is some of the pawky humour of Scott, more than a hint of the wilder fooleries of the late' Samuel Foote, and a Sterne-like determination to avoid a connected narrative at all costs, which makes it crystal clear that Mr. Dickens will never write a long novel, or even a good short story. He has, nevertheless, certain qualities of crude humour and gusto which will, in our view, unfortunately condemn him to be the sort or hack who scribbles crude farces for East End theatres or penny gaffs. All his characters are, of course, wildly impossible, with an Irish madcap semblance of life which recalls Charles Lever, and might earn him (could he now and then strike a serious note) the dubious renown of a second Captain Marryat. We do not expect to hear more of Mr. Dickens, but we wish him a modest success in those less literary fields for which his talents seem to us best fitted.