RECENT NOVELS.*
Timm could not well be a much greater difference than that which exists between the circumstances under which the two novels which form the subject of our remarks on the present occasion appear before the public. The first puts in an appearance, so to speak, timidly and experimentally, unvouched for, and unprotected by any author's name, and bearing within itself what is, to our mind at least, sufficient evidence of its being the work of a lady, who is making her first essay as a writer of fiction. The second comes before us with all the confident assurance of an old friend and favourite, rely- ing, as a passport to success, not only upon the world-wide reputa- tion of the gentleman whose name appears upon its title-page, but also upon the fact of its having been, for the last fifteen months, the principal attraction of a magazine whose circulation has reached a point hitherto wholly unprecedented in the annals of periodical lite- rature. In attempting to form an estimate of the respective merits or demerits of the two works, it is only fair to take this essential difference into account; a difference which, as will be abundantly evident from the observations which we are about to make, is scarcely more apparent in the circumstances of their publication than it is in the nature of their contents. The first remark which suggests itself after a perusal of All for the Best is, that the author in defining it as "a story of quiet life" has • All for Use Bat: a Story of Quiet Life. 3 vols. London : Hurst and Blackett. Framley Parsonage, By Anthony Trollops, Author of " Barehester Towers," ito- fhe. 3 vols. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. described its most essential characteristic in the exactest possible manner. Not only is the life which it portrays of the quietest con- ceivable order, but it is lived by all the characters of the story with a persistent and imperturbable tranquillity which almost passes belief. Although, from time to time, events of considerable importance do actually occur, such as might certainly be held to justify at least a temporary display of excitement—as, for instance, a couple of pro- posals of marriage, and one sudden death—they are taken almost as qiuetly as if they were the most ordinary occurrences of every-day life. The story is a very simple one, and the dramatis persons are remark- ably few in number. The scene is laid in a village in one of the northern counties, in the family of a clergyman who has no duty, but lives quietly on a moderate income. The household consists of the paterfamilias, Mr. Harcourt, a gentleman of whom we learn abso- lutely nothing but his name, and a slight indication that he has a taste for scientific pursuits ; his wife, who keeps herself so very quiet throughout, that the very fact of her existence might easily escape the notice of any but the more than ordinarily attentive reader; and of ao daughters, who are the principal personages of the story. Mabel, the elder of the two, is a girl of considerably more than average ability and of queenly aspect, who, at various times during the course of the first volume, shows symptoms of finding her home- life a little too quiet, and manifests a tendency to assume the position of a femme ineomprise. The younger, whose name is Maud, is a charm- in.. specimen of the household fairy, finding her pleasure in the quiet discharge of her household ditties, and in ministering to the comfort of the surrounding poor. In the same parish lives one Stephen Roden, agent to a neighbouring duke, one of those rough, honest, tender men whose recent elevation to the dignity of heroes of romance has, doubtless, been the source of no small satisfaction to the numer- ous class of male readers who are conscious that their chance of success in life is likely to depend rather upon their mental, than upon their personal, charms. This gentleman falls quietly in love with Maud, makes her a singularly quiet offer, and is by her as quietly accepted. Mabel, meantime, accompanies her father to Scarborough, where, among a variety of less attractive company, she meets with a plain but very intellectual north-country clergyman, who, after a due amount of delay, takes possession of her heart quite as quietly as Mr. Roden had taken possession of that of her sister. Maud, however, is not destined to enjoy the full fruition of her promised happi- ness. Shortly before the time fixed for their wedding, Mr. Roden (as she always calls him) is killed in a railway accident ; a blow the only result of which, is to convert Maud from " a very lov- able, very gentle, very winning girl, into a brave, noble-thoughted woman." Mabel ultimately marries her clergyman, and enters with him upon the course of subdued happiness ; and the story terminates with the death of Maud, who expires very quietly some years after her sister's wedding.
It is obvious that so quiet a story as that, whose outline we have thus briefly sketched, is likely to fail somewhat in exciting and main- taining the reader's interest, unless it is told in a peculiarly attractive manner. This is an advantage which, we fear, it does not possess, at least in a sufficient degree. Its author has fallen into the error, very common with young novelists, of making us acquainted with the characters of her' story by means of descriptions and reflections, instead of allowing them to develop themselves gradually in a more dramatic manner. We doubt if we have ever met with a novel in which the conversations bore so small a proportion to the bulk of the work. What little dialogue there is, is carried on almost entirely by the incidental characters of the story ; chief among whom are three or four old village dames, in the reproduction of whose talk it is not difficult to trace a feeble and not very successful attempt to imitate the peculiar humour of "George Eliot." This defect is, in a great measure, owing to the fact that the greater part of the story is told in the form of extracts from Mabel's diary. We are the more inclined to regret its occurrence because AU for the Best is clearly the work of a lady of more than ordinary ability. She writes, as a general role, smoothly and well; sad the introductory chapter—which, though not at all badly done, introduces us to nothing, and jars strangely with the rest of the book—shows that her general avoid- ance of conversations is not owing to any inherent inability to record them in a fairly effective manner. The character of Maud is very charming, and is well conceived and carried out. For Mabel, clever as she is, we do not care nearly so much. We are inclined to think that if she were less clever, she would be decidedly more agreeable. We are not at all sure that we should like a young lady who told us, in the course of an ordinary conversation, that, "like Simmias in the Platonic Dialogues, she must assent to what we said, as she had no opinion of her own on the subject." Neither can we under- stand how a lady who pointedly parades her ignorance of slang, should, not ten pages further on, describe a gentleman as one " who evidently thinks London stout of himself, and expects that we shall do the same." If the authoress of All for the Best will allow us to offer her a word of advice, we would counsel her, in Mabel's own language, to take, in any future works that she may produce, a more objective view of the persons and events that she undertakes to describe. Let her further bear in mind that the reader naturally
takes more interest in a character which gradually develops itself in the course of a story, than he can possibly do in one which is mapped out and described, however exactly and precisely, by the narrator. Let her avoid the use of affected forms of expression, such as "nervy" for nervous," and as "the heart of you" for "your heart." If she will pay attention to these points, and to a few others of a similar nature, there is no reason whatever why she may not take a fair rank among the novel-writers of the present day. As regards Frawley Parsonage, our task is a very simple one in- deed. It would be absurd to waste any time in narrating the events of a story, every detail of which must already be perfectly familiar to at least the great majority of our readers. We have lite- rally nothing to do but to praise. Mr. Trollope's reputation as a novelist is now so universally and so firmly established, that the mere appearance of his name on the title-page of a work of fic- tion is in itself a sufficient guarantee that the book deserves,
and will obtain, a great and immediate success. Those who rely upon this guarantee in the case of the work now before us, run no risk of being disappointed. We have no hesitation in saying that Fragile, Parsonage is at least equal to anything that Mr. Trot
lope has hitherto written. If there is a point in which it is at all in- ferior to any of his former works, it is the construction of the story; and whatever slight defects may be observable in this respect are doubtless to be attributed to the fact that the present work was originally published in a serial form. The reperusal of Pramley Parsonage in its present form, while it has fully confirmed our pre- vious opinion that it is one of the most amusing books with which we are acquainted, has decidedly tended to raise our estimate of
its artistic merit, by the additional insight which it has given us into the clearness with which each character has orginally. been con- ceived, and the consistency with which in each case the original con- ception has been carried out. It was not possible, for instance, when reading the first number of the story in the pages of the Cornhill .Magazine, to attach a due significance, as an index to
their respective characters, to the difference of opinion between Mark Roberts and Lady Lufton as to the appointment of a school- mistress, and to the manner in which that difference was ultimately settled. We have heard it suggested more than once that Mr. Trol- lope has exaggerated the importance of the money difficulties in which Mark Robarts is involved, since it is impossible that a man who possesses an income of fifteen hundred pounds a year could ever be seriously or permanently embarrassed by a paltry debt of nine hundred pounds. We are inclined, however, to think that, in this respect, Mr. Trollope is right. In such a case a clergy- man is in a far worse position than even a considerably less wealthy layman, inasmuch as he cannot assign to his creditors any portion of his clerical income, and so can offer no legal security. The only mode of escape open to Mark Robarts was that suggested by Mr. Forrest, and, whatever we may think of the wisdom of his refusing to avail himself of it, jhere can be no doubt that the refusal was quite in accordance with the character of the man. We still think, however, that no man, unless he were a far greater fool than Mark Roberts is represented as being, would ever have consented to sign the second bill until he was assured of the destruction of the first. Another
point on which we have heard Mr. Trollope's judgment called in question is the manner in which he represents Lucy. as speaking of
Lord Lufton to her sister-in-law, after her first rejection of him; and we confess to having been ourselves startled at finding her in- dulging in speculations as to whether it was his legs or his title that had fascinated her. We have since been assured, on authority which we cannot venture to dispute, that the whole of the conversa- tions between Luny and Fanny Robarts on this point are eminently true to nature ; but, while we bow to the decision, we must acknow- ledge that certain portions of them sound rather oddly to our mascu- line ears. Such trifling defects as these, however—even grant- ing them to be defects—are quite lost in the general excellence of the book. Nothing could be better than the portrait of Mr. Sowerby, for whom Mr. Trollope has an evident tenderness, which it is quite impossible to help sharing, in spite of his numerous and manifest rascalities. Mr. Trollope has evidently an intimate ac- quaintance with the peculiarities of the genus to which Mr. Sowerby belongs. The following observation, for instance, is as true as it is humorously put : " It is a remarkable thing with reference to men who are distressed for money—distressed as was now the case with Mr. Sowerby—that they never seem at a loss for small sums, or deny themselves the luxuries which small sums purchase. Cabs, dinners, wine, theatres, and new gloves are all at the command of men who are drowned in pecuniary embarrassments, whereas those who don't owe a shilling are so frequently obliged to go without them ! It would seem that there is no gratification so costly as that of keeping out of debt. But then it is only fair that, if a man has a hobby, he should pay for it !" Nothing, too, could be better than the delineation of Lady Lufton's whole character, than the descrip- tion of the encounter between Mrs. Grantly and Mrs. Proudie, than the humorous account of the struggles of the giants against the gods, or than the article in which the Jupiter advises Mark Roberts to resign his stall. We must not forget to say a word in praise of Mr. Millais's illustrations, which, as might be expected, are admirable throughout. But we cannot refrain from inquiring by what process the quiet little girl who is shaking hands with Lord Lufton in the frontispiece to the first volume—who is to our mind, a perfect embodiment of the idea conveyed by Mr. Trollope's description of Lucy Robarts—has been transformed into the splendid creature who is sorrowing so attractively at its close.
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