Four Studies of Love. By A. W. Dabourg. (Bentley and
Son.)— These stories, or "studies," as their author rather affectedly calls them,
are reprinted from the Temple Bar Magazine. They are neither better nor worse than the stories of their class, of the making of which there is seemingly no end, in style and construction, and they are more forcible than most of their 'fellows. "Bitter Fruit" is the best of the four, but it is too like "Sybil Lennard " and "The Admiral's Daughter" to claim originality ; and it is roughly written, mare like the sketch for the dramatic version of the story which, we believe, has been acted with some success, than the finished picture, which a drama, " adapted " to fiction, ought to be. In the " study " called "An Old Man's Darling," Mr. Dubourg sins seriously against both propriety and taste, by presenting to his readers a gross caricature of the sort of pietism which used to be called "evangelical." This coarse and offensive portraiture is unrelieved—redeemed it could not be—by humour, and it is gratuitous and needless. The girl who marries the rich old man for the sake of her family, need not have been incited to such an act by cant and hypocrisy ; the instigators had plenty of machinery at hand as powerful, but less offensive to readers of candid
mind and good-taste. Would-be satire of this kind is ready raw material for book-making, but the book-makers would do well to avoid it, for it is as nasty as it is cheap.
Previous page
