NOVELS.
" CROPPIES LIE DOWN."* MR. BUCKLEY'S novel has many of the unmistakable signs of a first venture. He has not yet mastered the art of omission, and in his conscientious desire to spare no detail that may lend completeness to the picture runs the risk of repelling and disgusting the very readers who might best appreciate the remarkable powers of description and characterisation which he possesses. To speak frankly, this is a book which can only be commended with a grave caution. It treats of a period in which the worst human passions raged unchecked, and it deals with them in a spirit of relentless candour. No one should attempt to read it who is not prepared to sup full of horrors. Yet it cannot be alleged that this lack of reticence is due either to unrestrained partisanship or to the wanton desire of gratifying a base curiosity. It is the outcome of a sincerity which may depress and shock, but cannot corrupt, the reader. Villainy and cruelty are never painted in colours other than those which render them loathsome and execrable. The tragedy, in a word, has, in spite of all defects of execution, much of the cleansing quality due to the operation of pity and terror. Again, the story, though instinct with a passionate love of Ireland, is curiously free from the sentimentality of patriotism as well as from anti-English animosity. Mr. Buckley discriminates between the conduct of the Regulars and the Yeomanry, and never fails to illustrate the contempt entertained by the former for the latter ; his portraits of English statesmen are very far from being mere caricatures, while his sketch of George III. is even sympathetic ; the role of what might be called the second hero is assigned to Major Heathcote, a redcoat soldier, while the basest villains of the plot, and the deadliest enemies of Ireland, are the native informers, spies, and agents provocateurs who ply the fatal industry of manufacturing rebellion with such deadly skill. Mr. Buckley, we may add, does not seek to extenuate the savagery of the " croppies." What he does claim for them is that in their fiercest reprisals they refrained from retaliating in kind upon the worst excesses of their persecutors.
The scene of this tale of "fire, famine, and slaughter " is laid in Wexford, and in its opening chapters one cannot but be struck by the general resemblance between the attitude of the gentry and that of the French noblesse on the verge of the French Revolution. The junketings at Mal- plaquet, the house of Mr. Nevile, a weak, amiable borough- holder, give a highly coloured, but by no means improbable, picture of the baser elements of the party of Ascendency. Yet it is characteristic of the author that he does not deny even the worst of these " half-breeds " the quality of courage. Indeed, there is very little political capital to be made out of the book by Nationalist or Home-ruler. The heroine, Nevile's daughter, is essentially a non-political personage, the finest quality in her character being her compassion for her suffering sisters. Her name, Irene, may be regarded as a symbol ; for apart from its meaning, it is an anagram on Ierne. And one may find a further significance in the fact that her three suitors are Devereux the outlaw, Heathcote the redcoat, and Philip Gash the spy. All the three men love Irene in their different ways—indeed, in the case of Gash, his devotion to her is the only redeeming feature in the character of a forger, gambler, and spy—but her heart is given to Devereux, a beau sabreur with a romantic career and a chivalrous nature. To Heathcote she owes her life on the night when her father is killed and his
• " Croppies Lie Dawn": a Tale of Ireland in VS. By William Buckley. London : Duckworth and Co. De.]
-house burned ; -while the-importunity of Gash wins the day-in her hour of desolation. But the love interest is but a sub- sidiary element in the sombre panorama of insurrection and -, intrigue which Mr. Buckley unfolds before us with a power and lurid picturesqueness which make one hope that one day he may devote his talent to a happier theme. For this is a book which it is impossible for any one to read with pleasure. The reek of the shambles is seldom absent, and by the time we have reached the close the only surviving member of the leading cIramatis personae is the arch-traitor Harrigan. Yet "when he °bosses, Mr. Buckley can charm his readers; witness 'the fine passage describing Ileathcote's vigil at Nevile's house: "Then the guests gradually drifted away, and Heathcote asked permission to be shown to his room, so that the family might be .:at liberty to retire the sooner. He had experienced too often the s.Riclsjtndea.of a soldier's life .to feel more than a passing emotion • on thus revisiting the scenes of his boyhood, but the vapid, reck- less talk of the company he had met in the drawing-room had ,given rise to harassing thoughts which for the moment banished weariness. Essentially a practical man, he saw clearly now that it was not in the interests of such people the Castle had entered -upon its policy of deliberate exasperation. Poor fools,' he muttered, pushing up the sash of his window, if you only knew how much thought Pitt or Castlereagh takes for you, you would not be so ready to insult your own flesh and blood ! So the Papists are negroes, and what are ye, who are content with the rind we throw ye when the orange has been sucked ?' He drew a chair to the casement, and resting his arms on the sill looked out. Below, he could see the shadowy foliage of the elm groves and coppices which lay between him and the misty fields fringing a streamlet whose course he could trace by its murmur ; in the distance a lamb bleated softly from the meadows. In spite of him, old memories, sweet and sad, came thronging back, forgotten faces, forgotten tones, the sacred memories of home ; Irene accompanied him, not the stately lady he had parted from a few moments ago, but a little maid with tumbled hair and flushed cheeks who put her hand in his and trotted noiselessly by him, at once a grown man and a boy, through the long series of mental pictures—and they were all the time going to pick the buttercups nodding their varnished heads in the bawn field, which he remembered lay across the trout stream by the road. The:, were going rapidly too, he holding her hand and directing the fire of his company on the horsemen of Tippo Sahib, Irene's mother was calling from her gilded frame, and at the same time he heard George the Third saying—' You will now proceed to Ireland, taking the rank of Major in the Ninth Regiment of Dragoons, with ample powers to report on the state of military discipline there, especially in the counties of Carlow, Wicklow, Wexford." Steady, keep step and touch. So ! Halt ; form fours. Right turn, quick march. Halt! Deploy—prepare to receive cavalry.' He sat up, his eyes dilated, his face alert. Was he dreaming ? He saw only the softly flowing stream shining under. the nebulous light of stars. Stay, surely something else was glistening too, something faintly phos- phorescent that appeared and disappeared, moving hither and thither in measured time, now a long line, now a hedge of twinkling points ? Suddenly, the soldier's practised ear caught the tread of marching feet which even the turf of the bawn field could not deaden. In a moment the meaning was plain, and for one hot instant he dreaded immediate danger, then he shrugged his shoulders, it was simply a body of men being drilled, as they had been, possibly for the past half-hour. Its audacity made him sinile, but the smile died away when he reflected on what the audacity implied. A faint jarring call like the cry of the night- hawk, wavered down the wind, and as suddenly the rhythmical sounds dwindled away into a confused and ever-lessening murmur of departing footsteps, then the interlaced patter of horses' hoofs broke smartly on the succeeding stillness. Heath- cote traced it all along the dusty road skirting the grounds of Malplaquet and at a portion of the boundary wall which had been broken by the fall of an unskilfully felled elm, he saw the quick passage of jogging helmets. Hah, a patrol! ' he muttered, enough noise to wake the country side— nervous probably.' The horsemen pattered over the little bridge where the irregular road took another turn, and soon the jingling of scabbard and spur died away into a feeble tinkle. There was a long rift of white on the grey of the brightening sky, the summer dawn was breaking. At the same instant some men who must have been hiding under the bridge appeared upon it : they paused awhile, apparently holding a brief consultation ere they separated. One man carried over his shoulder a pole tipped by a steel head which shone cold in the grey light. For a moment he stood there, a ihadowy sinister portent, and shook his clenched fist in the direction of the house. Then, the bridge was empty again, the country lay silent beneath the silent stars. Thus, Major Heath- cote saw for the first time the pike of Ninety-Eight."
Mr. Buckley, in fine, has great gifts, though- we cannot reconcile ourselves to the use to which he has turned them. It is at least open to question whether the particular phase of Irish history he has chosen to illustrate is a fitting subject for fiction. But pending the arrival of a novelist who shall treat the story of Ireland's woes with the large sanity of Sir Walter Scott, we readily pay our tribute—subject to the caution given above—to the poignancy and passion of Mr. Buckley's
distressful romance.
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