OLD MARGARET.*
'OLD MARGARET is young Margaret Van Eyck ; one of the three Van Eycks who painted at Ghent nearly five hundred years ago. As she remains young all through the brief tale, we must conclude that " old " is only a term of endearment. And as wo see scarcely anything of her, we are inclined to suspect that the title was chosen to catch English ears, that might, peradventure, not have cared to take up an old chronicle of revolutionary Ghent chafing under the dominion of the Dukes of Burgundy. Nothing can be further than the homely title from affording a clue to what the book is about. But this ancient meaning of a book's name is quite for- gotten, and the point now is to attract the popular taste and to treat with supreme indifference any question of the appropriate- ness or truthfulness of the title chosen. Old Margaret is a tale of the strong hand, of riot and tyranny, of seduction and duel, of gambling, lies, and treachery, of mystery and spectacle. It is written with all Mr. Henry Kingsley's vigour and force, and what we may term his unscrupulous dash, more bent to produce effect thou to delineate faithfully ; with something of the gaudiness and flourish of men in armour in a circus procession, at which old men smile and children stare with open-mouthed admiration. But we .do not much care for this kind of thing; or for the adventures of bravoes and duellists—however magnificent their physique, or skilful their fence, or splendid their apparel—or of any kind of thorough- Margaret. By Henry Kingsley. 2 Tole, London; Tinsley Brothers,
paced villain ; and we like these gentry still less when it is endea- voured to excite a weak-minded pity for them, and a desire to pet them, by dwelling on an occasional fit of tender reminiscence or cheap remorse which ends in nothing.
Mr. Kingsley should have told us how much is historical and how much fictitious. He can scarcely expect his readers to be intimate with the Flemish history of nearly five hundred years ago, and the value, if any, of the book, must depend on the faith- fulness with which it describes the relations of the Flemings with the Dukes of Burgundy, and of the artisans of Ghent with the capitalists who employed them. If it is a scrap of real history, we suppose we ought to be grateful for it in a modern dress ; but the details, at any rate, do not carry any such conviction with them. Indeed, the action is so quick, so marvellous, and so startling, that we are irresistibly reminded of the sensation-novels of Punch. The following passage, taken at random, will illustrate what we mean, and is a fair sample of the rattling pace of the book :- "When Van Dysart came down to Van Kenning, Van Kenning shook hands with him warmly ; and Van Dysart said—' Good day, old Judas. I thought you were vowed to my death.'—' You have found that out, have you?' said Van Kenning, coolly. ' How many secrets have you trusted to the Duke?'—This was very easy to say, for tho Duke had given orders that every one should leave the hall ; and so the halberdiers wont clanking out. A alight difficulty arose between the herald and the two pages with their cushions, as to who had right of going through the door first. It ended in something very like a free fight between the pages and the herald behind the back of the unconscious Duke, to the extreme confusion of the Archbishop. He had just ascertained that the pages, by hard hammering about the herald's head with their cushions, had won, and had run away with his trumpet, when the doors were closed, and they wore invited up on to the dais, to join the Council.— 'I suppose, gentlemen,' said the Duke, that you have beard of my proposal to raise more money ? I may shortly say that I propose to raise it by a tax on salt-fish. Archbishop, what do you say to it?'— We shall have a riot,' said the Archbishop.—' And put it down,' said. the Duke. What do you say to it, Van Kenning ?'—'I agree with the Archbishop,' said Van Kenning. 'But I would like news from—' —' That is my business,' said the Duke, quickly. 'What do you say to it, Councillor ?'—' If it could possibly be avoided, my Lord Duke—' began the Councillor.—'It cannot,' said the Duke. What do you say, Van Dysart ?'—' I think I can carry it through for you,' said Van Dysart.—'I think you will be able. There are paper and pens there ; just write down your demands for doing so, would you, and give them to me ?' For one instant there was a motion towards Van Dysart from Van Kenning's arm, as though he would have stepped him. But the Duke's eye was on him, and ho saw that his bargain must be fuldiled. Van Dysart sat down and wrote out his own infamy and his own deliberate ruin. Fifty thousand crowns if he could persuade the people to submit to the tax ; one hundred thousand if he could lead a sufficient number of them out into the town into the open whore they could be attacked by cavalry. It was written, signed,and given to the Duke, who read it, nodded, and put it in his bosom. Then the conversation was resumed by the Duke. There is one more detail, Van Dysart, which I should wish for, You were the seducer of that petulant woman, Mar- tins ?'—' I fear that is true.'—' I want to have her executed; she is a continual plague. That will make no difference in our bargain, I suppose ?'—'Yes, that would make a groat difference in our bargain,' said Van Dysart. 'I should want more money.'—' Well, you will tall me the difference presently ; at present we aro agreed, and the Council dis- missed. Van Dysart, come to my room in half an hour. I shall see you all to supper, gentlemen. I need not tell you that this Council is perfectly secret, under pain of death.' They all four left by the door at the lower end of the room, and the Duke followed them to it. When their footsteps had died away, the Duke stood in the middle of the room, and said, quietly—' Come out, you two.' And from behind the hangings on one side 'came Spada, and from behind the hangings on the other came Martina."
Mr. Kingsley is true to the style of the old chronicles. There is no attempt to sketch character ; it must exhibit itself in action. Introspection and motive and analysis are words unknown to the old chroniclers, and not very necessary now in deciphering the characters of such men as figure in Old Margaret, with whom the only principle accepted was that might was right. For, saving a little tenderness in Margaret and a little self-control in the Arch- bishop and the merchant prince Van Kenning, the main difference in character is the difference between a selfishness decently moral and one unbridled and utterly lawless. The honour known amongst thieves is the only honour, and we hope even thieves now-a-days would blush to find the secrets confided to them by their fellows fame, as the notorieties of Glieut five hundred years ago appear to have found them before the words were well off their tongues. Everyone goes about confiding per- sonal and State secrets to everyone which everyone seems to have known before. Even the Freemasons disregard the oaths admin- istered with their awful mysteries ; and as, in consequence of the character of the confidants, action of the most treacherous kind is taken immediately, it is not wonderful that the story is full of startling variety as to the fortunes of the actors, and that its movement is unusually rapid,—so rapid, indeed, that there is no time to register the order of events, or to note the common-place intervention of night, so that we find persons at one place that
we have every reason to believe are at another ; for we cannot euppose--though it looks very like it—that Mr. Kingsley gets his work done by ignoring possibilities and making his agents ubiquitous.
There is the same keen eye for the picturesque and the same loving appreciation of it, which we remember with so much plea- sure in Mr. Henry Kingsley's earliest works ; but there they were for the lovelinesses of his native Devonshire, and here they are for the barbaric pageantries of ancient Courts ; and he is more in love than we care for with rich and gorgeous apparel, telling us twice over, for instance, at an interval of only a couple of pages, that Philippe-le-Bon was " dressed in violet velvet with crimson hose," and John Vau Eyck, " in puce satin, slashed with crimson." " We will not go into the details of the dresses ourselves," says our author in another place, and immediately—on the principle of
the reformed drunkard who passed the public-house, and then returned to treat himself to a glass for having done so—gives us,
con amore, the following description :— THE Bacchse of Euripides is well known as the most brilliant 45010 their painting, and dressed in the most artistic manner. example of his latest and most characteristic style. The freedom
." The Van Eyeks were thero in their very finest clothes, having put were standing and talking close to the dais at the upper part of the
They and power which he gained by departing from the earlier trash- hall. Near them was Van Kenning, dressed in scarlet velvet, with tions of the Attic stage may be said to culminate in this piece; white hose and blue shoes, which called down on him the utter repro- and if it does not contain any detached passages which for actual bation of Hubert Van Eyck, who at once gave him a lesson on colour. poetic beauty are above the best parts of the Hippolytus or Ion, Spada was splendid : he had won money—from young Van Rugby of yet it is unsurpassed by any other work of Euripides, and we Rotterdam if it mattered—and ho had paid cash before delivery to old venture to think by any work of the other Attic tragedians, in its Van Judenstrasso, and got a beautiful suit of clothes (which Dame Krankenglauber distinctly averred she had soon on Duke John's hack dramatic interest as a whole, and in all the qualities that go to long before old Levi got his title of Van Judenstrasse). Spada's clothes make a play effective in acting. Indeed oven those critics who were splendid, and the jewels he had borrowed from several young think it necessary for the honour of sEschylus and Sophooles to ladies were splendid also. Spada was an entire success, but hardly such take up the jests of Aristophanes as the ground of their opinions, a success as Van Dysart. Van Dysart was dressed in light pearl grey from head to foot, without a single ornament. The Duke was very late, and to ignore the deliberate judgment of Socrates and Plato, can and until he came, the Archbishop, birreta in hand, with a cloud of hardly dispute that the Euripideau innovations were most important priceless yellow Malinee loco over hie dark robes, wont up and down the additions to stage effect as we now understand it. Of course it is hell making himself agreeable until the young Duke. came in. I think open to objectors to say that the more a Greek play was made the sight, all in all, was such a one as we cannot see nowadays., ' With a reputation, both family and personal, to maintain, Mr. and this is in fact the substance in great part of the oavillings at Henry Kingsley should give, more time to the finishing of his work, Euripides with which the classically educated youth of England even if he decide that such a fragment of barbarous history is are encouraged to edify themselves in the Theatre of the Greeks worth rescuing from oblivion. Ho is careless pf the order of his and elsewhere. However, Mr. Paley some time ago spoke out events ; leaves them—however inconsistent with each other—unex- courageously in defence of the peculiarities of his favourite plained; repeats himself —(we are told, certainly three times, that in tragedian, which it had been the fashion to denounce as those days men went naked to their beds) —and is very careless about heretical ; and Mr. Tyrrell, who has now edited the Bacclue his grammar. He uses—like numbers of his fellow-authors to whom separately, shows not only by his remarks on this play, he should set a better example—the perfect for the participle and but by the tone of his whole work, that he appreciates the participle for the perfect with a delightful indifference, and the distinguishing merits of Euripides to the full extent. he will even use both in the very same construction, as " Spada His introduction proves, if proof were needed, that the scholar's sung a little Provençal song, and sang it very prettily too." Again, minute study of a work in detail, is no obstacle to the compreheu- he says, " Let us go and pick up Father Peter, and let we three go siva enjoyment or understanding of its artistic effect. What he round to all of them in turn," And inasmuch as Mr. Henry says of the general drift of the piece is just so much as is wanted Kingsley has assumed, and freely used, the right to make his per- in that place ; it is enough to stimulate and assist the reader's *reneges speak in very colloquial English—indeed to use English own thought, without being so elaborate as to leave no active part slang—he can scarcely excuse his use of the ancient " pled " for for him. Amongst the remarks which have an application beyond same animation as of old—and for which we have always been London: Longuitins. 1571. unable to account—the discourse on foliage to the other lusty young gentleman of indifferent intellectual development and per- plexed and harassed expression. We then recur to the fair students of inimical disposition, and so on through this interesting series of fou r frescoes. The Brothers Tinsley also bore us with some initial letters of which we are very sick indeed. Here are the two vicious-look- ing birds, of no particular order, hoping against hope for the removal of those great beams which form the T's and W's, and which prevent their pecking out each other's eyes. Here, too, is the imbecile vulture leering at nothing through the loops of the B's. And here is the bloated little baby Bacchus, crowing and kicking, unconscious of his imminent peril beneath the point of the impending M. So eminent a writer as Mi. Henry Kingsley should decline the Messrs. Tiusley's obliging little illustrations.
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