The Tenth Earl. By John Berwick Harwood. (Hurst and Blackett.)
—A concise and accurate description of the contents of this book may be given in the words of the familiar saying, "There's nothing new and there's nothing tame, and it don't matter." The author's receipt for making it seems to have been as follows :—Take a gouty and furions-tempered old earl, who lives perpetually in a mechanical chair, which has surprising powers of creaking, whirring, and clanging, when "urged by his gnarled hands ;" give him a washed-out, timorous wife, languishing under the burden of an important secret ; and give him also two fair daughters, of whom one is wise and the other silly. Take, next, a melodramatic young man with the "eye of a hawk," in which there is sometimes "an ominous sparkle ;" whose lips "quiver and blanch," who has "a smile of singular sweetness," and who will walk in "vague, uneven strides." Add a mysterious villain, who is sickly, deformed, and omniscient ; who drinks opium like water ; who knows an overwhelming secret, by means of which he keeps the hero under his thumb ; who has a daughter whom he wishes to force the hero to marry, by the threat of revealing the secret in case of refusal; and who has "haunting eyes, fall of a secret rage and menace half conoealed,—mocking eyes, withal, that seemed to read the very heart of him they gazed upon, and to scorn what they read." Intersperse people of high rank and great wealth, who inhabit stately mansions, with endless boudoirs and drawing-rooms, and have trains of servants. Stir in various uninteresting minor characters, such as a tedious actor
for whose existence there never appears to be any particular reason at all, and a pert lawyer who has "a look of deferential effrontery." (That lawyer's countenance must have been quite unique. If a photo- graph of it is to be had, we should be most curious to see it.) Sprinkle with a lavish hand descriptions of coronets on servants'
buttons, seals, wax, paper, coffins, and wherever else they can possibly be introduced. Garnish with a few fine poetical expressions,
"quivering moonlight," "viewless chains," Mix in a well-worn incident, such as the substitution of one child for another by a nurse. Season with a secret which is to remain undisclosed till the very end of the work, though the merest tyro of a novel-reader will have guessed it before the completion of the first volume. Throw in as mach padding as will fill the imperial three-volume measure. Finally, serve up the whole on a hopelessly wet day by the sea-side, or at a
watering-place, when the victim of ennui may perhaps manage to get through the ingredients thus prepared for him. The book has the
merit of containing no harm in it, except bad English, of which,
however, there are several instances ; we read of sleep coming to a man's slumbers; of two families that kept stately housekeeping, and of man's temper having changed for the worst, instead of for the worse. The work of the reviewer in connection with the book may be said to be done in three cuts. First, cat it open (since publishers never will save us that labour) ; secondly, cut it up ; thirdly, cut it alto- gether, for we should certainly not care ever to look into it again.
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