CURRENT LITERATURE.
David's Loom. By John Trafford Clegg. (L on g mans. )—This is a very remarkable book in many ways. For one thing it is a triumph in vernacular; for another it is a very successful experi- ment in a hitherto untried and apparently unpromising field of historical fiction. It gives us Rochdale life and dialect, tragedy and comedy, in the early part of the present century, when inven- tion was regarded by a not inconsiderable number of working men as their worst enemy, and " dealt with " by methods with which the present generation has been rendered familiar through the Broadhead revelations. It is in the form of an autobiography, the author of which, Laurence Holt, " violinist and dabbler in prose literature," is himself an interesting character. The true centre of the book, however, is the David whose loom gives it a title, although he is not so intrinsically noble as his own son Stephen. There are plenty of incidents in David's Loom. There are trade riots, and there is military coercion. Captain Masham kills the noble Stephen in a duel ; David avenges his son's death in too brutal a fashion and suffers, in consequence, the supreme penalty of the law. Then we have Irish humour, impersonated by Phelim, and contrasts in female love, presented by the single- minded Ellen and the capricious, if not heartless, Miss Seaford. Altogether, David's Loom is one of the most interesting and artistically satisfactory romances of the historical kind that have been published for a long time.
Previous page
